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Abortion in Poland: What will Tusk’s new day for women bring?

The new Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has promised a liberalization of the country’s abortion laws, which are some of the most restrictive on the European continent. His path is a sharp contrast to the previous government’s anti-abortion crackdown. Yet, even as he commits to the issue publicly, the campaign he took to get there reveals that reproductive freedom in Poland remains an issue many lawmakers use only instrumentally.

Hot water, running over a pregnant belly, under beige and purple shower tiles. An orange cat, crawling through the litter box. Only a couple months after abortion doula Wiktoria Szymczak moved to Kraków from Warsaw in 2023, she was helping a stranger end a pregnancy in her apartment bathroom. Earlier in the day, Szymczak had got a call from a client who needed more help than anticipated, who we will call Agata to protect her privacy. Previously, Szymczak had told her how to pursue one of the few legal methods left for obtaining an abortion within the country. It is still legal to go online and order abortion pills for yourself in the mail through a dealer based outside Poland (Szymczak recommends medical non-profits like “Women Help Women”). Agata went online and she bought the pills to end her pregnancy.

February 7, 2024 - Katie Toth

Estonia aims to help Europe’s rare earth supply chain

Once a Soviet-era uranium processing plant, the Silmet factory in Sillamäe, Estonia, is now Europe’s leading processor of rare earths. Silmet’s mother company, Toronto-headquartered Neo Preformance Materials, aims to establish the continent’s first manufacturer of high performance magnets for European consumers. These “permanent magnets” have the potential to make a huge impact in the European electric car and offshore wind-turbine industries, which up until now were exclusively dependent on supplies from an increasingly less reliable source – China.

It was during the COVID-19 pandemic, when China's borders temporarily closed, that something clicked in Raivo Vasnu’s mind. Silmet, the factory he heads in Sillamäe, Estonia is a former Soviet uranium-processing facility in Europe’s north-easternmost tip near the Russian border. It is also Europe’s largest processor of rare earths, a crucial category of elements necessary for a wide range of technologies, including electric cars and wind turbine technologies.

February 7, 2024 - Isabelle de Pommereau

Breathing room: Poland’s minority communities after the elections

For years, minority groups in Poland have been feeling pressure both from the government and society at large. Now with a new governing coalition, there appears to be potential breathing room for many of Poland’s minorities. However, that does not mean that the road ahead is clear or easily navigable.

Poland is often described as a homogenous state – white, Catholic and ethnically Polish. The numbers, at face value, support this idea. This apparent homogeneity is reinforced by the media. Often as a throwaway line when describing Poland’s demographics, or, for more insidious motivations, by those on the far right. This characterization, however, grossly simplifies the story of Poland and its citizenry. Historically, both the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Second Polish Republic were heterogeneous states comprising a number of peoples, religions and languages.

February 7, 2024 - Daniel Jarosak

A writer and war. Karahasan, the rebel

Dževad Karahazan’s rebellion was the result of his refusal to live imprisoned in a world of absolute truths, which are fed on the fear of others. He was not an idealist. He experienced real evil. He chose the life of a writer who diligently collected the remains of the wisdom of bridge builders.

When I learnt about the passing of the Bosnian writer, essayist and philosopher Dževad Karahasan, I could immediately feel the taste and smell of the Bosnian meat stew dagara. In our lives there are meetings that leave permanent marks on us. Regardless of when and where they take place, they come back to us as if they were real again.

February 7, 2024 - Krzysztof Czyżewski

Off-SHORe politics: how Gagauzia was sold to a pro-Russian oligarch

The Gagauz minority in Moldova represents a unique blend of Turkic ethnicity and Orthodox Christian identity. But it was neither its authentic culture nor mysterious history that brought it into the media spotlight recently. Instead, it was a number of outrageous events signalling that Gagauzia is increasingly becoming a destabilising force for the pro-European government in Moldova.

Constituting only 4.5 per cent of the population of the Republic of Moldova, the Gagauz minority is concentrated in the Autonomous Territorial Unit of Gagauzia in the south of the country. Although Gagauzia, for various reasons, has always been more inclined towards Russia than the rest of Moldova, since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 this region has turned into the main stronghold of the pro-Russian opposition.

November 19, 2023 - Irina Percemli

Roma refugees from Ukraine face additional adversity

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, a large portion of Ukraine’s Roma population escaped as refugees alongside their fellow Ukrainians. However, they were not always met with open arms and many faced additional challenges and discrimination.

In the face of Russia’s war on Ukraine, the subsequent hardships of Ukraine’s Roma population, both as refugees and internally displaced people, has drawn the world’s attention to the double standards refugee host countries hold even in the face of danger and destruction. It is estimated that of the approximate 400,000 Roma living in Ukraine (this rough figure is due to migration and lack of Roma documentation), 25 per cent have fled since the beginning of Russia’s February 2022 invasion. Yet, unlike non-Roma Ukrainians, who have generally felt welcomed when seeking refuge in Ukraine’s neighbouring Eastern European countries, Roma Ukrainians have oftentimes faced prejudice and distrust. This is similar to that which they face in their homeland.

November 19, 2023 - Madeleine Cuckson

Fear of Russian drones creates anxiety in Romanian villages

As Ukraine has been trying to re-route its crucial wheat and corn exports via its ports on the Danube river, Russia has begun targeting them. Their proximity to Romania creates a significant risk to the local residents, who feel their concerns remain unaddressed. Drones or fragment of drones have already crashed on this NATO country’s territory, with little recourse.

“The sky was lighting up from the tracer ammunition fired by the Ukrainians and you could see the outline of the drones. The last one crashed at 00:20 – I can show you on my surveillance cameras how loud the bang was. And I told myself: this is one hundred per cent in Romania,” recalls Neculae Marian, a resident of the city of Tulcea who owns a house in the village of Plauru. Following multiple crashes of Russian drones on Romanian territory around the settlement, confidence is low and frustrations towards the country’s decision-makers are at a high. Neculae becomes visibly irate when talking about the government’s response and argues that the authorities have been consistently disingenuous about the risks faced by the local population.

November 16, 2023 - Vlad Iaviță

A story about the Elbe. A story about Europe

European civilisation has developed by means of a few large leaps: Rome, Renaissance, Enlightenment and the European Union. Of course, the EU’s role is still underway and thus we do not know what its end will look like. But what all these leaps have in common is their connection to the land. In this way, the story of the Elbe river and its surroundings is the story of European history as a whole.

I was commissioned to write a book about the Elbe river by the Labirynt Publishing House in Czechia. I have known the publisher – Joachim Dvořák – since 1990. Labirynt is known for publishing good books with very nice covers. That is why I was happy to receive its offer and more than anything else that the topic of my new book would be about the river. In my youth, I was racing in fast-flowing upper rivers.

November 16, 2023 - Jan Šícha

A forgotten tale of violence from Romania’s recent past

The story of violent clashes that broke out in Sibiu in Romania during late December 1989 is one that many have forgotten since the revolution and regime change. Tudor Giurgiu’s latest film Libertate revisits that turbulent event in Romania. The film not only acts as a reminder of the ruthless terror and chaos of the time but also as a chance for Romanians to reassess their own history.

When Nicolae Ceaușescu's brutal regime collapsed in Romania 34 years ago, Tudor Giurgiu was 18 years old, living in his home city of Cluj-Napoca, in central Transylvania. “For many days and weeks, the country was directionless,” the 51-year-old Romanian film director explains from central Sarajevo, Bosnia, where he is showcasing his latest film Libertate. “People were not talking normally, they were going nuts and there was a lot of shouting, paranoia, and violence.”

November 16, 2023 - JP O'Malley

Kroke. Orthodox Jews in Krakow

The exhibition Kroke. Orthodox Jews in Kraków is the result of a long-term photography project by Agnieszka Traczewska.

November 6, 2023 - New Eastern Europe

No school for the children of Izium

Ukraine’s newly liberated territories still show the scars of war. Critical infrastructure often remains damaged and life remains anything but ordinary. This is particularly true in the case of schools, with the education system in the town of Izium simply unable to provide for the country’s youngest citizens.

Almost a year after its liberation, Izium, a town in Kharkiv Oblast, bears the visible scars of the Russian aggression. Heavily damaged by the Russian bombing and having at least temporarily lost the majority of its population, Izium still remains an unsafe place to live. It will take a long time for the town to rise again.

September 11, 2023 - Kateryna Pryshchepa

Rethinking Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies in the West

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine since February 2022 has impacted academic research on the region, forcing students and staff in western university departments to rethink their interests and curricula.

After Teresa Reilly took Russian classes for her bachelor’s degree requirements, she was keen to learn more of the language and decided to apply for a master’s programme that would allow her to spend more time in Russia. In autumn 2021, she enrolled in the Erasmus Mundus master’s degree in Central and East European Studies, Russian and Eurasian Studies, with the aim of spending the second year of her studies in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia. This would allow her to hone her language skills and work on her thesis, which was focused on a post-colonial view of the relationship between NATO and Yeltsin’s Russia.

September 11, 2023 - Veronica Snoj

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