The media landscape in Ukraine has been heavily impacted by the ongoing Russian invasion. While the centralization of media to build a common message and fight disinformation made sense at the beginning of the war, critics now argue that the president’s office is abusing its control of the media while discrediting independent journalists.

Over two years into the all-out war with Russia, Ukraine is bound to face further stress tests. Nowhere do these come into view so strikingly as in the Ukrainian media, where the authorities’ desire to maintain control; civil society’s calls for scrutiny; the opposition's political ambitions; and Moscow’s attempts to gain influence all clash.

The beautiful country of Montenegro caught me by surprise during a recent weeks-long research trip. But it was not just the natural beauty and historical sites, but also another picture which astounds in times of war in Ukraine: a large Russian and Ukrainian diaspora which settled mainly on the Montenegrin coast. living together peacefully by an overwhelming majority. This lasting experience led me to write this article, analysing the lives of the two diasporas belonging to two states waging a brutal war against each other.

Already before the outbreak of the full-scale war in Ukraine in 2022, Montenegro was always a country of longing and emigration equally among Russian and Ukrainian citizens. Linguistic similarities and the common Orthodox faith serve as the basis of this attraction. Yet, linguistic and religious interplays were by far not the only reason for Russian and Ukrainian emigration to Montenegro.

It is clear that Turkey is very keen to be increasingly involved in the South Caucasus region. Its interests in this region are inextricably linked to cooperation with Azerbaijan and numerous transport projects, particularly those that allow for the transportation of energy resources. Following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the importance of supplying energy from the Caspian Sea to Europe has only become more crucial.

Much has been written about the Turkish involvement in the South Caucasus in 2020, when the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh re-ignited after a period of calming. As expected, Turkey supported Azerbaijan, its close ally. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan called on the Armenian government to withdraw from Nagorno-Karabakh and gave assurances that Ankara would support Baku militarily if necessary. There were even rumours that a Turkish F-16 fighter jet shot down an Armenian plane, which was denied by Ankara.

An interview with Markus Wehner and Reinhard Bingener, authors of The Moscow Connection. The Schröder Network and Germany’s Path to Dependency. Interviewer: Jarosław Kociszewski

JAROSŁAW KOCISZEWSKI: After reading your book The Moscow Connection. The Schröder Network and Germany's Path to Dependency, I had an impression that what you wrote about Russia, and especially about the Kremlin’s connections with German politicians, was very well-known already in Poland, but also in other parts of Central and Eastern Europe. How new was this information for the German audience?

REINHARD BINGENER: I think this information was partly new and partly old. Many of the things that we wrote about in the book were known before the information was public. However, this information was released over time and therefore there was a lack of a broader picture. Our idea was to combine the facts and present this big picture.

A conversation with Una Bergmane, author of Politics of Uncertainty: The United States, the Baltic Question, and the Collapse of the Soviet Union. Interviewer: Maciek Makulski

MACIEJ MAKULSKI: How did you arrive at the point when you thought that there is still much to uncover when it comes to our understanding of the processes around the collapse of the Soviet Union and the regaining of independence by the Baltic states?

UNA BERGMANE: I would probably say by accident, since I wanted to write a master's thesis about French-Baltic relations in the 1920s and 30s when the Baltic states were independent before the Soviet occupation. But then I discovered that there was already a doctoral dissertation just defended in Paris on that very topic. So I started then to look at what seemed like the next logical thing – what France did when the Baltic countries wanted to become independent again at the end of the 1980s. What was interesting for me initially was the discrepancy between what I saw in the French archives.

Since 2020 the Belarusian media field has lost up to ten important independent publications. Some of them did not survive the financial crisis while others were taken over by propaganda or decided to avoid covering politics. The decline in the number of independent media outlets and the difficulty in reaching audiences within the country, where consuming truthful news can result in criminal charges, affects the overall political mood in the country.

In 2023 Belarus ranked 167th out of 180 countries in press freedom, according to Reporters Without Borders. Since the political protests in 2020, the regime of Alyaksandr Lukashenka intensified its persecution of the free press. Currently, there are 35 journalists imprisoned on criminal charges, serving sentences in prisons where they face torture and isolation from the outside world and their families. From 2020 to 2023, nearly 600 journalists and media professionals were arrested, according to Press Club Belarus.

First there were the peasants who went from being subjects of the partitions to pioneers in the Wild West. Then there was the wave of educated people fleeing the communist regime. Among the Poles migrating to Canada were also veterans of the Second World War, in whom Canadian soldiers found a replacement for German prisoners of war.

The journey across the Atlantic was long and difficult. The ship sailed to Canada for a month. Walter F. Chuchla recalls that the ship rocked in all directions and seemed about to break in half. The sea was so rough that the travellers were not allowed to leave their cabins for four days. Disease outbreaks and crowding were also a problem. Many people were dying. Minors were allowed to travel in pairs, on a single ticket, as long as they used one bunk and shared a meal.

This year marks the 80th anniversary of the deportation of the Crimean Tatars, which reminds us of the double tragedy these people face. First in 1944, on Stalin’s orders, they were displaced from their homeland. Second, when after years of struggle, they returned home and rebuilt their lives in independent Ukraine. Despite this, Crimea was annexed by the Russian Federation in 2014. Since 2022, when the full-scale invasion started, the peninsula has been turned into a base for the Russian army.

I visited Crimea for the first time in May 2000. It was the 56th anniversary of the deportation of the Crimean Tatars. In Simferopol a gathering was organized to commemorate the victims of the deportation. Many people held blue Crimean Tatar flags. Some held posters detailing the story of their displacement, and some made demands to the authorities. At that time, and even more so in the years to come, it seemed that the tragic fate of the Crimean Tatars belonged to history. This was the case until 2014. Once the Russian Federation had annexed the peninsula, the Tatars were once again deprived of their right to honour the memory of the deportation as they wished. Worse, they found themselves faced once again with repression.

A native language has a clear and unique grip on an individual. While it is possible to learn others, it is perhaps impossible to escape the unique issue of identity when we discuss our first language. After all, we do not choose the language taught to us by our family.

“What remains?” asks German journalist Günter Gaus of Hannah Arendt during a 1964 television interview. The transcript of this conversation is well known in English, and Arendt's famous answer is most often rendered as “What remains? Language remains.” However, what Arendt really says is “Was bleibt? Es bleibt die Muttersprache.” Muttersprache means mother tongue, or in the patriarchal Polish, “father tongue”. Italians say Madrelingua. In Ukrainian, it is рідна мова, or literally, native speech. It is a language we do not choose.

At the age of 36, Vladimir Miketa retains few memories of the war and his past. However, what bothers him most is people’s attitude towards the environment in his area and how authorities manage waste in the region. As a passionate mountaineer and nature lover, he often explores the surrounding area during his hikes. It was during one of these excursions that he discovered a road leading to the village of Lončari.

Before the war in Croatia between 1991 and 1995, the small village of Lončari, situated in the central part of the country and belonging to Zadar County, was home to approximately 120 people, primarily of Serbian nationality. After they fled in 1995 following the military operation “Storm”, during which the Croatian army liberated a significant portion of territory previously under the control of Serbian rebels, the homes inhabited by Serbians remained abandoned for years. Many of these homes were used as stables by local residents, who kept goats and sheep in them.

Bosnia and Herzegovina's ambition to join the European Union faces a complex reality despite optimistic declarations from Brussels. The author and political scientist Jasmin Mujanović believes that the deeply entrenched ethnic and political divisions within Bosnia and Herzegovina are too often overlooked by the West. His latest book The Bosniaks: Nationhood after Genocide, gives greater insight into this complex history.

Bosnia and Herzegovina is keen to join the European Union. In Brussels the feeling is mutual. “Your place is in our European family,” said EU Council President Charles Michel on Twitter/X late last March. The post was much ado about nothing, though, warns Jasmin Mujanović. “Banal sloganeering about EU membership is completely divorced from the political realities of Bosnia and Herzegovina,” the political scientist writes in The Bosniaks: Nationhood After Genocide.

The January Uprising of 1863 was the last common struggle for the ideals of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Today, when no existential disputes exist between the independent nations of Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania and Belarus, the memory of 1863 should be a stepping stone to teaching the history of the Commonwealth as a common legacy.

Earlier this year, the presidents of Poland and Lithuania, accompanied by the leader of the Belarusian democratic opposition in exile, celebrated together in Vilnius the 161st anniversary of the January Uprising. This event was fought by the nobility and intelligentsia of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the years 1863-64 against Russian imperial rule.