Lefteast
On Feb. 4th the United States shot down a Chinese high-altitude balloon after it sailed over the United States over the course of several days. The Biden administration claimed it was a surveillance balloon, while the Chinese government called it an “unmanned civilian airship used mainly for meteorological research purposes” that had strayed off course […]
Four men lie dead before me tonight. Their faces are pixelated on my screen. There is blood on their garments, on their skin, on the parched soil where their corpses are dumped. Their mouths open in a moment of silence, and there are boots in a corner. Twenty years ago in March 2003, our cries […]
The Ukrainian premier of Reflection, the latest film from director Valentyn Vasyanovych, was held at Kyiv Critics’ Week in October 2022, more than a year after its theatrical premiere at the 78th Venice International Film Festival. The war in Ukraine has limited the film’s domestic distribution, though Vasyanovych has indicated his primary audience is an […]
While it might seem that the neoliberal consensus has broken in some Western countries, in the post-socialist space discourses of privatization and individualization are so strong that we can hardly speak about a crisis of the neoliberal order. It is even harder to imagine some radical change in the West and almost impossible to speak […]
This article is part of the multilingual ELMO series Transnational migration in CEE from intersectional perspectives of race, gender, class and citizenship. With the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, approximately 7.8 million Ukrainians have fled to European countries[1], searching for safety abroad.[2] According to UNHCR Regional intentions report, approximately 87%[3] of […]
After it invaded Ukraine, Russia became the most heavily sanctioned country in the world. This has provoked a new wave of discussion about the effectiveness of sanctions as a tool of political influence. Many commenters have pointed out that sanctions rarely achieve their goals, and, as Daniel W. Drezner points out, the sanctions currently imposed […]
She posted this video in the chat room in the second week of the war. When Russia attacked, Ukraine closed its borders to those with “male passports.” When the general mobilization was announced, thousands of transwomen, transmen, and non-binary individuals were trapped. In the video, she, tired and dirty, happily reported that she had escaped. […]
LeftEast editors met our Azerbaijani comrades at LevFem’s / Transnational Social Strike’s conference in September 2022 in Sofia. As we knew almost nothing of the left in that country, we asked them for an interview, and they generously obliged. LE: Could you introduce yourselves: who are you and what are you fighting for? We are […]
On September 21, Putin announced “partial” mobilisation. What does it mean? Who are the most vulnerable to mobilisation? How does it affect civic infrastructures and women’s status? We asked a group of left activists, journalists, and sociologists from Russia, who have been running the anti-war media “Nevoina” (“Notowar”) since the beginning of the full-scale invasion. […]
This August’s Kombinatas festival brought dozens of leftist researchers and activists from the region to its camp in Saugus Atstumas (Lithuania). Predictably, Russia’s war on Ukraine was the most discussed topic and the festival’s organizers shared with us videos of two related panels. Oppositional movements and anti-war resistance in Russia Why did Putin start a […]