I feel this is a worthwile read, even if your're not at all familiar with Roose or the NY Times https://mastodon.social/@dangillmor/115326502758947336

#moldova 🇲🇩 elections. I was looking at the live speeches yesterday evening as the polls closed, and Dodon was more or less claiming victory, Usatii was obviously in a very good mood and sure none would gain a majority and he could be "kingmaker" in parliament, etc. It's common to pretend and […]

With over 90% of votes counted, it appears that Maia Sandu's pro-EU ruling party will have an absolute majority. Already 51 seats (out of 101 seats in Parliament), with many of the votes not yet counted from the diaspora, this is more likely to end with 52 […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

Perhaps the main surprise from the parliamentary vote in #moldova 🇲🇩 so far is the score of the party "Democracy at home" which, against expectations, will enter parliament with about 6% of the votes. Nice video (and text) explainer of Ziarul De Garda - […]

Nice recap of Dmitri Kozak's career as negotiator, and quite possibly the highest ranking official who tried to convince Putin that war in Ukraine was a mistake. No need to glorify the man, but he believed in mediation. Which eventually, inevitably led to his dismissal last week […]

In #russia - military spending is "up to 40 percent of the budget" - "total employment in the military-industrial complex now stands at approximately 3.8 million people." - even if the war ended, the stage is set for "a large-scale rearmament program", also because it would be difficult to […]

I can't get over the home-designed logo of "patriotic" electoral bloc in Moldova 🇲🇩 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriotic_Electoral_Bloc And to leftist friends attracted by the "hammer and sickle in a heart in a star" combination, let me break it to you […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

It's the international day of peace https://www.un.org/peaceday

In my latest article - https://www.balcanicaucaso.org/eng/Areas/Russia/The-Russian-Hawks-and-the-Kremlin-240083 - I explore how some of my own findings confirm the centrality of the ideological circles at the centre of Juliette Faure's excellent latest book, *The Rise of the Russian Hawks […]

Ilan Shor, crypto firms, banking schemes enabling sanction evasion... Shor's role for Moscow goes well beyond his political meddling in Moldova https://reporter.london/?p=1484 #moldova

According to Romanian officials, the jets were perfectly capable to shoot it down while it was in the NATO airspace – and had every legal, internationally recognised justification to do so – but the drone would eventually return to Ukrainian airspace, so they held fire. 2/3

Good wrap-up of the state of affairs, a month after the Armenia-Azerbaijan meeting at the White House in Washington https://carnegieendowment.org/russia-eurasia/politika/2025/09/azerbaijan-armenia-trump-deal #armenia #azerbaijan

I do wonder how much fantasies of immortality popularised by Russian Cosmists - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_cosmism - such as Nikolai Fyodorov contributed to Putin's serious consideration of this issue https://masto.ai/@meduza_en/115181235810388955 #russia

Further passportisation in Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Now it becomes very much straightforward for residents of both entities to get not only the "foreign Russian passport", but also the "domestic Russian passport", with a bunch of implications, including easier access to a number of benefits […]

I've heard first-hand stories about this freezing of NGO bank accounts in Georgia 🇬🇪, and the practical effects for NGOs involved in EU-partnerships and projects is... well, big and direct, with unclear ways out for all actors involved. And the honestly quite scary perspectives for colleagues […]

> "The design of Romania’s educational system makes it perhaps the most stratified educational system in the world." Nice quote from an article on education in #romamia that quotes interesting studies, describes factually some dyanamics, but is puzzling and problematic in its logic and, most of […]

Excellent review of the latest book by Jeremy Morris, "Everyday Politics in Russia: From Resentment to Rebellion" Focuses on neo-liberal transition in Russia, moves beyond the exceptionalist narratives, based on ethnographic approaches […]

There's some important points here, although I do believe that workers' pension funds should direct their investments keeping in mind workers' welfare and interests https://flipboard.com/@euronews/business-m1eitu69z/-/a-vrmzzN4WRbylvxyt5xm4Ng%3Aa%3A89340020-%2F0

German army ads on frequent display at Munich airport

Chisinau is decreasing the number of polling stations for Transnistria's residents at the forthcoming parliamentary vote. This time, Tiraspol had been demanding *more* polling stations, claiming that there are 200.000 residents with Moldovan citizenship willing to vote […]

BBC Russia just came out with this long-read about Pavel Zarubin, the journalist with most direct and constant access to Vladimir Putin https://www.bbc.com/russian/articles/cg50nz1v79qo No big surprises, but perhaps even more so the story feels characteristic for how things have been changing […]

I wrote a small Python package for AI-based research and classification tasks. It's now public. - Post: https://globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/fossil-fuels/augmenta-new-tool-for-ai-classification-and-research/ - Code: https://github.com/Global-Witness/augmenta/ - Example story 1 […]

The main Italian news agency opens its homepage with: "Putin says yes to a bilateral meeting with Zelensky by August" However, there's no real hint that this will happen, nor that Putin ever said it will. I don't see it happening. #ukraine #russia

I am somewhat puzzled by the current discourse around "article 5"-level guarantees for Ukraine. Even according to Nato official website, the wording of the article is actively meant to reflect how the US would *not* automatically come to the assistance of its […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

As usual, good points by Sam Greene on the post-Alaska moment https://open.substack.com/pub/tldrussia/p/tldrussia-special-edition-a96?r=52ul3z&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email #russia #ukraine

Curious to see companies addressing the diaspora, traditionally back to visit in the summer, in #romania: "Diaspora, happy to see you again!"

When explaining why direct talks with Ukraine would be useless, Leontyev quipped: > “We are talking about a new global world order that guarantees our interests and our security. Discussing the global world order with Ukraine is idiotic." By this very logic, only meeting with Trump can finally […]

Latest joke I've heard in Romania: Peace will not be reached when Trump meets with Putin, but when Putin meets

[war in Ukraine] Military update from Ukraine's frontlines, at this most delicate of times... https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-war-russian-breakthrough-pokrovsk/33501257.html

Back in 2018, on 10 August, I was getting tear-gassed on the streets of Bucharest. My reporting (in Italian) https://www.balcanicaucaso.org/aree/Romania/Romania-gas-lacrimogeni-in-mezzo-alla-folla-senza-ritegno-189650 #romania Statue of limitation expires next year, so not much to see justice […]

It really is kind of a big deal: > "Trump brokers potentially game-changing deal with Armenia, Azerbaijan" https://eurasianet.org/trump-brokers-potentially-game-changing-deal-with-armenia-azerbaijan #armenia #azerbaijan

Now out at America—an essay I've been working on on-and-off for almost a decade. It became about what life with AI is doing to the practice of asking questions. "With what we ask, we shape ourselves and each other." […]

Strict speed limits, improved pedestrian and cycling infrastructure, less cars – and all of a sudden you have a capital (and major city) without traffic fatalities. Incredibly surprising. Not. Can we start implementing Helsinki's policies over here as well? Right now? Thx! […]

Important (and timely!) contribution by Olesya Vartanian: > "Nagorno-Karabakh and the Collapse of Russia’s Peacekeeping Mission: What Weak Mandates and Absent Guarantees Can Teach Us" […]

I just got one of the most puzzling cold emails... what is it? is it what students do when both Wikipedia and ChatGpt are down? is it some bizzarre social experiment? the beginning of an elaborate spam and scam scheme? Or the kind of thing an "AI" agent would […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

"Europe accused of going soft on Azerbaijan" https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y7yl59nzro

Reading about Russian modernist conservatism and the need: > to strike a balance between human agency and technological power by seeking the “spiritualization [odukhotvorenie], deification [obozhestvlenie] or, more simply, the humanization [ochelovechenie] of […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

Interesting quantitative approach by Novaya Gazeta, although data are not published along with the article: > "Novaya Europe analysed almost 40,000 protests to see how Russia’s war in Ukraine has changed civil society" https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2025/06/27/picking-your-battles-en #russia

"The US nuclear umbrella over Europe was a myth". And so would be a French or British "nuclear umbrella". > Conventional deterrence is more credible." https://www.prio.org/comments/1786 "Poorly conceived ideas about nuclear deterrence are therefore a sad derailment of the current debate on […]

Condemned to 22 years in prison to an anti-war volunteer in Russia, not involved in any violent activity https://www.bbc.com/russian/articles/c2ezk0jrywxo https://meduza.io/en/news/2025/06/20/russian-volunteer-who-helped-ukrainian-civilians-sentenced-to-22-years-for-treason […]

How hot has Eastern Europe become? https://blog.samizdata.co/p/how-hot-has-eastern-europe-become Great #ShowYourStripes variation with labels by @nicu

"A Brief Ode to Data Minimization" - https://little-flying-robots.ghost.io/a-brief-ode-to-data-minimization/

Excellent interactive piece on the physicality of data centres and their location in and around Dublin. Interesting conclusions and really nice visuals https://investigates.thejournal.ie/data-centres #dataviz #maps #datajournalism #ddj

Some more context about the drones used for Ukraine's operation against Russian airfields. https://little-flying-robots.ghost.io/ukraines-audacious-drone-attack-some-thoughts/?ref=little-flying-robots-newsletter > "First Contact's Osa drones are capable of carrying up to 3.3 kilograms of payload […]

🇺🇦 Ukraine's impressive attack on 🇷🇺 Russian airfields leads to one of those situation where Russia's TV and pro-government, pro-war Telegram channels diverge substantially. Z-bloggers acknowledge it's a major blow, and call for massive escalation, including going nuclear, see here for an […]

What are the "root causes" of the conflict with Ukraine according to Russia? My latest structured analysis shows that they do not effectively relate to Ukraine, but rather to the world order and Russia's place in it […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

As Romanians across Europe flock to the polls, time to bring back my quantitative analysis showing the incredible density of Romanian polling stations in Italy: half of Italians residents could drive to a Romanian polling station in less than 35 minutes […] [Original post on mastodon.social]

"The Coalition of the Willing to do What?" - Former minister of foreign affairs of Lithuania Landsbergis pulls no punches in his latest blog post https://landsbergis.com/the-coalition-of-the-willing-to-do-what/ #ukraine

Sam Greene lays out clearly some important points after the Istanbul talks, starting from a rather unitinuitive premise: > "The negotiations that will end the war in Ukraine don’t involve Russia." https://tldrussia.substack.com/p/tldrussia-rapid-reaction-tick-tick #russia #ukraine

Watching Russian TV, it's still quite a show how they convey maximalist positions through quotes by Western correspondents