The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in three major blows to the Kremlin’s international strategy, thus making it adjust to much less favourable circumstances than when Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea and disrupted relations with the West.
Playing the role as the nation’s leader, Vladimir Putin paid a visit to the Kommunarka hospital in Moscow, the place where those infected with coronavirus are being treated. Just six days later the head doctor of the hospital, Denis Protsenko, announced on Facebook that he had contracted the virus.
Today, while the entire world is affected by the ongoing SARS-COV-2, Europeans are, more than ever, together in their fight. Our borders might be closed, but our hearts, minds and policies should stay open, especially to those who need help and solidarity the most.
New Eastern Europe is providing an update on the situation with COVID-19 (coronavirus) in the Eastern Partnership states. Each have enacted certain policies aimed at minimising the spread of the infection. Below we give the current status of these policies as well as an updated number of reported cases by country.
The Black Sea region is quickly becoming a geopolitical battleground which is gaining the interest of major powers, regional players and smaller countries – and the stakes are only getting higher.
This issue is dedicated to the 10 year anniversary of the European Union’s Eastern Partnership as well as the 30 years since the 1989 revolutions in Central Europe.
In the eastern parts of the European continent, 1918 is remembered not only as the end of the First World War, but also saw the emergence of newly-independent states and the rise of geopolitical struggles which are felt until this day.
It often seems, at least from the outside, that Belarus remains isolated from the West and very static in its transformation. Yet, despite its relative isolation, Belarus is indeed changing.
Vladimir Putin is set to win a fourth term as president of the Russian Federation. The March-April 2018 issue takes a deeper look at the consequences of Putin’s presidency and what could eventually come after…
We cannot deny there is something idiosyncratic about the former Soviet bloc which links its societies together. Either through common experience or history (or both).
“The price of Europeanising the Balkans is much higher than the price of the Balkanisation of Europe,” claims Zagreb-based writer Miljenko Jergović in the opening essay to this issue of New Eastern Europe.