With the Croatian EU presidency, attention will be diverted towards the Western Balkans, where Russia is testing the EU’s commitment and resolve.

Over the past five years, the influence of the Kremlin in Odesa has shifted from sponsoring open calls for separatism to more subtle forms of interference.

Review of the book titled: Ukraine after Maidan. Revisiting Domestic and Regional Security. Written by Tomasz Stępniewski and George Soroka.

The Russian language is the only 'big language' in the world to remain so closely connected to its parent nation-state, Russia. Despite the fact that it is used so widely across the post-Soviet sphere, there are no official country-specific varieties of the Russian language. This kind of ethnolinguistic nationalism is yet another mode by which Moscow influences the “near-abroad” and even European Union member states.

Interview with Stefano Vergine, an Italian investigative journalist and co-author of the recent book The black book of Lega. Interviewer: Mario Giagnorio.

Germany’s proceedings around Nord Stream 2 will not only hurt this country, but also European common policy as a whole from a security point of view. Additionally, they are undermining Germany’s already-fragile position as the European mediator and dealmaker.

Even after the change of power last year, Armenia continues to adhere to Russia on foreign policy and tolerate Russia’s massive role domestically. Most recently, this is demonstrated by Armenia supporting Russia’s vast military effort in support of the Syrian regime.

Five years after Russia used information and lies, special forces, dark money, propaganda, military invasions, and the manipulation of disadvantaged locals to attempt to seize all of southern and eastern Ukraine – succeeding in the Donbas and Crimea – one regional Ukrainian leader from those chaotic and uncertain days has important, and possibly even optimistic, lessons from his innovative approach to defend Ukraine and its European path against Russian aggression and its retrograde plan for the region.

Christmas may be known as the season of love and kindness, but Bulgaria will remember Christmas 2018 as the season of division. A seemingly benign gift from Russia shed light on historical wounds and party politics as well as the surprising impact social media could have on bilateral diplomacy.

Bulgaria's flirt with Russia concerning energy might be signaling a shift in the overall relationship between the two countries.

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.

Since the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine, far-right and extremist organisations in Central Europe have redirected their attention to geopolitical issues. They not only agitate against NATO and the European Union, but also share a particular sympathy towards Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Clear evidence points to direct support for groups coming from Russia or pro-Russian sources.

In April 2014, just a few weeks after Russia annexed Crimea, Tamás Gaudi-Nagy, a Hungarian lawmaker from the far-right party Jobbik, gave a speech to the Council of Europe’s General Assembly. The tone of his speech reflected his t-shirt which read “Crimea legally belongs to Russia, Transcarpathia legally belongs to Hungary”. After the “legitimate” annexation of Crimea by Russia, he argued, it was time for Hungary to take back lost territories such as Transcarpathia – a part of Ukraine that belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire until 1920.

One year later, in autumn 2015, Gaudi-Nagy made an even stranger statement during a TV debate: he claimed he was encouraged by his Russian counterparts while he was delegated to the Council of Europe to revise the border with Ukraine, hinting that Russia would back such a move. He said the time has come to change the course of history. But these performances were not the only actions by the far-right and extreme right to put pressure on Hungarian and Ukrainian authorities to aid in the secession of Transcarpathia.