Lefteast
Note from LeftEast Editors: Originally published by Second Cold War Observatory on May 6, 2024. Hungary’s current cycle of industrialization within electric vehicle (EV) and battery production chains may be seen as a typical case for third-country attempts to “hedge” geoeconomic competition (Camba and Epstein, 2023). Attempting to capitalize on its position at the Eastern periphery […]
On May 28, the Parliament of Georgia has overcome a presidential veto over the controversial “foreign agents law.” Initiated by the ruling party Georgian Dream (GD) in March 2023, the law soon had to be withdrawn because of backlash. This year, however, the GD achieved their goal. The legislation introduces mandatory registration for any “non-entrepreneurial (non-commercial) […]
If Part I of this interview dealt with the complexities of the revolutionary process taking place in Rojava, here, Anya Rebrii and Liza Shishko discuss the autonomous region’s geopolitical precarity. Remember Rojava? There was a time not long ago, when not only leftist outlets but mainstream media, too, were offering extensive coverage of this most […]
I first started working on this article on September 17. I was supposed to turn in a draft article about the high risk of Azerbaijan launching an offensive at Nagorno-Karabakh and next invading Armenia within a week. I told my editor we needed to publish the article as soon as possible because war could break […]
First published in French on December 30 in Révolution Permanente. Translation for LeftVoice by Scott Cooper. Moscow is amassing 100,000 troops on its border with Ukraine, whose government is seeking to lean on NATO to counter Putin. But even if Russian military intervention is central to that country’s defense, it is a very risky option. Are […]
In continuing the theme of the conflict between Russia and the West, which we discussed last week, now we turn to the broader issue of a leftist perspective on geopolitics. Even though most of the articles LeftEast publishes deal in one way or another with the transnational connectivities, we have been somewhat reticent about the […]
The latest wave of confrontation between Russia and the West—from the Skripal affair and the following diplomat expulsions and sanctions on Russia to the gassing of Douma residents most likely perpetrated by the Assad regime and the resulting US-UK-French bombing raids on Syria–rarely left the front pages of mainstream media. LeftEast has until now resisted […]
The main result from this weekend’s NATO summit in Warsaw was the official proclamation of a “containment” strategy toward Russia. So far, the practical consequence of this declaration is modest in military terms—a total of 3,000 foreign troops will be deployed to Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Far more important are the politics of this […]
Ilya Budraitskis: It has been several days since the start of the Russian military operation in Syria and the goals and strategy of this operation are still unclear. The explanation coming from Russian officials is unclear. On one hand they put an anti-ISIS agenda as the main reason of the operation, and on the other […]
Madina Tlostanova is an internationally known scholar whose writing critically examines questions of epistemology, history, geography, power and identity. She has published widely and in multiple languages. She presently is a full professor in the Department of Philosophy at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. Her book Gender Epistemologies and Eurasian […]