Author: disinfo1

Author: Cătălin Gomboș Relations between the European Union and Russia are again free-falling, just as Brussels seemed to be willing to reconcile. During the visit to Moscow of the EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, a visit marked by quite a few controversial moments, Russia announced the expulsion of three diplomats from Germany, Poland and Sweden. It was an act of public shaming that has infuriated many people. MEPs summoned Borrell to a plenary sitting to admonish him, so the EU’s top diplomat then called for new sanctions on Russia, after giving assurances just a few days before in Moscow…

Analysys by Dionis Cenușa The EU has the technical capacity, the financial power and the moral authority to play the role of objective arbiter that can prevent the movement of the local political actors in the wrong direction, which anyways favor the Russian factor … The movement of the power-opposition confrontation outside the Russian borders, generated by the persecution of Alexey Navalny, after the failed attempt of his poisoning, put before the EU the tough decision to multiply the sanctions against Russia. The new category of sanctions seeks to punish human rights violations and was agreed by member states at the…

The more hybrid our reality gets, the more hybrid warfare becomes. The statement is Russia’s latest informal creed, underlying a disproportionate war waged abroad. For that, the country has been using a “no man’s army”, and its best-known avatar is the Wagner Group. The war in Donbass and the mercenary company of a (former) GRU officer The international media has written volumes about this shadowy military outfit. Still, too little has yet come to light regarding the activity of the Wagner Group and the true purpose it serves. The uncertainty tied to its legal statute and the exact nature of…

Seen from Kremlin the Covid-19 vaccine Sputnik V has developed into an ideological offensive with a ferocity a bit like a ‘Cold War’ on words. Russian COVID-19 vaccine disinformation and Eastern Partnership countries The trends in what has been dubbed ‘vaccine diplomacy’ campaign in our recent Special Report are aggravating. Kremlin is busy leveraging diplomatic channels, state-controlled media and networks of supportive and alternative media outlets to support its narrative of Sputnik V vaccine supremacy. Since New Year, the tone and media landscape have hardened considerably. Promotion of the Sputnik V vaccine is not enough. A simultaneous massive, vulgar and misleading demotion…

Author: Mădălin Necșuțu The EU has extended an economic lifeline to Transnistria, the underlying idea being that this would help avoid conflict in that region. Russia is no longer Transnistria’s main economic partner, but still has considerable levarage in the region. Moscow is providing gas, sanctioning the lucrative cryptocurrency mining business, maintaining troops in the breakaway region, and exerting political levarage – but it doesn’t use it for conflict resolution.  Uneven negotiations For the past 28 years, Tiraspol has stubbornly refused to negotiate the political side of the settlement. It insists on obtaining socio-economic concessions from Chisinau and in return…

The breakaway region of Transnistria, Moldova, has been one of the biggest enigmas in Eastern Europe for the past three decades and continues to be a special case study, being one of the first frozen conflicts in the former Soviet space and then a model for what followed around the Black Sea` basin. The survival dynamics of this entity is even more interesting due to the antagonistic realities in the field. If in the first two decades it survived thanks to the economic support provided by Moscow, the last decade paradoxically belongs to the European Union and Chisinau. A Bolshevik…

”The lessons learned from the fiasco in Moscow involve a rethinking of the EU’s position on Russia, which needs to become firmer. There is no need for the EU to become “more aggressive”, the formulation of a “resilient” and “anticipatory” foreign policy is a more effective solution …” In its style, the political regime in Moscow, whose authoritarian traits are continually multiplying, skillfully uses foreign policy to compensate for the deficiencies of legitimacy in domestic politics. Paradoxically, the survival of Vladimir Putin’s regime depends largely on the success of engaging with the external world. As a rule, Russia sees the…

Author: Victor Pelin The ideological and organizational mess  inside the PSRM , which is the most  influential, for now, political party in the Republic of Moldova, should make the country’s citizens extremely tough, while the members of the party very curious to the causes of the more pronounced involutions of the party and should thus wonder: Quo vadis, PSRM?…” Ideological chaos inside the PSRM The leader of the Party of Socialists of the Republic of Moldova (PSRM), Igor Dodon, does not omit any occasion to note that the party he heads is the most powerful and representative in the country. If…

The year 2021 will be different from the previous one, but insufficient to compensate for the losses. Most of the political, socio-economic and geopolitical processes that characterize the Eastern Partnership states will perpetuate. Based on the complications and the progress achieved a year ago in the region, a series of developments can emerge in 2021 (IPN, December 2020). Each of the six Eastern Partnership countries will face individual challenges, many of which are deductible from the ongoing political-strategic and socio-economic processes. Besides, there are common trends that can synchronize at the (semi-) regional level. From here, the forecasts related to…

Author: Dionis Cenușa ”The year 2020 has revealed the many weaknesses of the Eastern Partnership region. The pandemic has become the most unpredictable exogenous factor, which has complicated the operating conditions not only for the economies of the six states but also for their political systems…” The Eastern Partnership space went through difficult times during 2020. Several situation towers have profoundly changed the image and democratic perspectives of some states in the region. Following the national elections in the Northern Group of the Partnership, the old elites’ status quo, whose existence is due to an authoritarian system or various sources…