November 2019 - After a 10 year absence, Polish forces are back in Lebanon with the Blue Helmets for the UNIFIL peacekeeping mission (United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon) to protect the local population and bring the stability to allow for a political solution to the 30 year struggle in the region.

After 70 years in the security and defence business, NATO is still the most successful alliance the world has ever seen, and still the only “kid on the block” able to defend Europe against the villains in its the neighbourhood.

Interview with Yuliya Shavlovskaya from the Gdańsk Support Center for Immigrants. Interviewer: Paulina Siegień

PiS (Law and Justice) remains in power in Poland after winning the 2019 parliamentary elections.

An interview with Ilia Darchiashvili, the Ambassador of the Republic of Georgia to Poland. Interviewer Daniel Gleichgewicht

On the Eastern border of the European Union, a new stage of cross-border co-operation with Russia has begun. Yet, new joint initiatives are unravelling in a tense atmosphere.

On January 23rd this year a particularly cold morning breaks on the border between the European Union and the Russian oblast of Kaliningrad. At 8 am, Lithuanian anti-corruption officers wrapped in thick coats are conducting a search at the Jurbarkas District Municipality building. Their heavy steps wake up the provincial bureaucracy. The gossip that the search is related to Russia spreads rapidly through the building’s dark corridors and soon reaches local and national media.

The concept of Polish Diaspora and antisemitism.

In the latest episode of Talk Eastern Europe, co-hosts Adam and Maciek delve into security-related issues in Central and Eastern Europe, with a particular focus on Poland’s view and its desire to increase American presence in the country. Adam then interviews Ivo Daalder, President of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and former US ambassador to NATO.

Kashubians have always lived in the seaside region of Pomerania. This land has been both under German and Polish influence, but Kashubians have managed to retain their unique culture.

In this second part of the two-part special podcast, Talk Eastern Europe dissects the results of the European Parliamentary elections in the region of Central and Eastern Europe.

Interview with Miriam Synger, director of the Emuna Foundation, which supports the Jewish community in Łódź. Interviewer: Daniel Gleichgewicht.

The early Polish interwar music, which merged traditional folk motifs with intoxicating modern rhythms, spoke of a more technologically minded, progressive Polish musical scene where arrangements altered day-by-day as musicians skipped between bands, and new compositions could be finalised overnight. But it was the tango which often took centre stage. And this was true for many other countries in the region at that time.

C’est sous le ciel de l’Argentine, où la femme est toujours divine (It is under the sky of Argentina, where the woman is always divine), croons the absorbing refrain of the French “Le Dernier Tango” (“The Last Tango”) – a seemingly commonplace helping of the early 20th century tango-fever which had taken Western Europe by storm. Though written in 1913 by French musicians, it was still unquestionably Argentine. The melody had been pilfered from the 1903 “El Choclo” (“The Corn Cob”) by Argentine composer Angel Villoldo and the French lyrics bore those familiar flashes of delirious desire prevalent in any tango of the period.