Connections between the Kremlin and Europe’s far right have become a topic of great debate in recent years. Despite this, the far right’s extensive support for Armenia in last year’s conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh largely went unnoticed by the continent’s media.

After the December 2020 parliamentary elections, the subject of nationalism resurfaced in Romanian politics. Even though the topic has been a key issue across the rest of Europe over the last decade, it only entered the public stage in Romania after the recent elections.

Ukraine not only needs to initiate an open discussion on the extreme right, but also step up its efforts in strengthening professional standards of journalism and ensuring the safety of independent journalists.

The growth of the far-right in Georgia is a dangerous development and it especially threatens the country’s Euro-Atlantic integration. Russian soft power appears to have played a role in this process. The question remains whether Georgian authorities have enough power and desire to reverse this worrying trend.

Radicalisation, and in particular far-right radicalisation, is one of the most pressing issues in Georgia today. Recent developments, such as the mobilisation of far-right and conservative groups, have demonstrated the need to strengthen efforts to prevent radicalisation and to raise public awareness of the issue. The rise of the radical right threatens the country's democratic development, its peace and the operation of state institutions.

The rise of the far-right in Bulgaria has led to an increase in xenophobia. The European People's Party is facing a troublesome trend among some of its members.

Moscow has long exploited Ukraine’s far-right movements as scarecrows, inflating their political importance, in an effort to discredit the Ukrainian nation, as a whole. But in reality, ultra-nationalist parties in post-Soviet Ukraine have struggled to find support for several election cycles now. If the various groups cannot unite, they are likely to fail once again in the 2019 parliamentary elections.

A review of The Hungarian Far Right. Social Demand, Political Supply and International Context. By: Péter Krekó and Attila Juhász. Publisher: Ibidem-Verlag, Hanover, Germany, 2017.

A review of Russia and the Western Far Right: Tango Noir. By: Anton Shekhovtsov. Publisher: Routledge, London and New York, 2018.

Anton Shekhovtsov, a fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, is already a familiar name to those working on the far right in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. He has previously written on Aleksandr Dugin and Russian neo-Eurasianism as well as on white power racist music subcultures. With his recent book, Russia and the Western Far Right, he is reaching out to a much broader audience than the relatively intimate academic world of comparative fascist studies.