Hundreds of Russian and Belarusian rail cars stranded near the European Union’s border with Ukraine in countries such as Hungary, Slovakia, and Poland. These wagons, which used to carry all kinds of goods from Russia and Belarus to the EU, were stranded on NATO soil after Russia’s attack on Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
If the war were to stop today, it would take Russia between three to five years to restore its military might and capabilities to the level they would need to strike the next neighboring country, says colonel Margo Grosberg, outgoing chief of Estonia’s military intelligence in a rare interview, published in English on VSquare.
Ukrainian sources suspect that through digital backdoors in Chinese-made surveillance systems, the Russian armed forces were able to spy on Ukrainian cities. Products of Chinese security tech companies have been blacklisted in several countries, but in Hungary, they are still widely used.
Russia’s weaponization of its energy supplies in the lead-up to its invasion of Ukraine have resulted in inflated gas prices, increased heating costs, and a general cost of living spike for many Europeans. These effects have been felt tremendously across the border from Ukraine, in Eastern Slovakia – especially hard by the region’s Roma population.
Not long after imposing sanctions on wood imports from Russia and Belarus, Europe saw an influx of wood supposedly coming from Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.
The EU has imposed sanctions on Russian propaganda outlets, such as Russia Today and Sputnik News. But the Kremlin-directed official channels are just the tip of the iceberg.
There is a large ecosystem of pro-Kremlin and alt-right disinformation websites operating in Central and Eastern Europe.
In the clash between Brussels and Budapest, Hungary blinked first. It was a successful test for the so-called conditionality mechanism that is supposed to keep countries from straying from democratic principles. But still, there is little hope for real anti-corruption reforms under Viktor Orbán.
