Institute of Central Europe/IES Commentaries

IES Commentaries

Baltic Team

IEŚ Commentaries 1523
10 February 2026
Michał Paszkowski - Baltic Team

The Price of Security: Moldova’s Electricity Market in 2025

The year 2025 proved to be a breakthrough year for Moldova in terms of energy security, yet it was also exceptionally challenging due to rising electricity prices. Following the suspension of natural gas deliveries to the MGRES power plant (located in Transnistria) via Ukrainian territory – a facility that for many years served as a pillar of the national power system –...

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Collective Memory Team

IEŚ Commentaries 1518
2 February 2026
Robert Rajczyk | Łukasz Lewkowicz - Collective Memory Team

Beneš Decrees: an unresolved problem in Hungarian-Slovak relations

The political instrumentalisation of the amendment to the criminal code, which penalises the questioning of the so-called Beneš Decrees, is common to the Slovak opposition party Progressive Slovakia (Progresívne Slovensko, PS) and the Hungarian opposition group Respect and Freedom (Tisztelet és Szabadság, TISZA), which enjoys the greatest poll support. Both parties,...

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Civic Studies Team

IEŚ Commentaries 1517
30 January 2026
Jędrzej Jander - Civic Studies Team

The Outlook for This Year’s Elections to the State Duma in Russia

In September 2026, elections to the State Duma—the lower chamber of the Federal Assembly—will take place in the Russian Federation. Although Russia’s system of power is built primarily around the prerogatives and authority of the president, the Duma remains one of the most important institutions of this formally democratic federation. Over more than two and a half decades of...

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Baltic Team

IEŚ Commentaries 1516
30 January 2026
Aleksandra Kuczyńska-Zonik - Baltic Team

Where Is the Center of the Belarusian Opposition Today? The Relocation of Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya’s Office

Since the 2020 presidential election, Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya has resided in Lithuania due to fears of political repression in Belarus. In mid-January 2026, she announced that she and her office would relocate to Warsaw. The main reason for this decision was the Lithuanian authorities’ decision to downgrade Tsikhanouskaya’s protective status,...

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Baltic Team

IEŚ Commentaries 1515
28 January 2026
Jakub Bornio - Baltic Team

The United States National Defense Strategy and the Security of Central and Eastern Europe

The United States National Defense Strategy, published by the Department of War, operationalises and further specifies the assumptions of U.S. foreign policy articulated in the National Security Strategy. The Pentagon’s vision of the international environment assumes that U.S. policy will be guided by a doctrine of “practical realism”, the prioritisation of the Indo-Pacific...

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Collective Memory Team

IEŚ Commentaries 1514
28 January 2026
Agata Tatarenko - Collective Memory Team

The Powerless in Davos: Central European Motifs in Mark Carney’s Speech

The speech delivered by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney at the Davos forum offered a contemporary interpretation of Václav Havel’s thought, particularly as articulated in the essay The Power of the Powerless. In diagnosing changes in the global order, Carney drew on Havel’s critique of life lived in pretense and conformity. From this perspective, the Canadian prime...

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Baltic Team

IEŚ Commentaries 1513
28 January 2026
Michał Paszkowski - Baltic Team

The Central European Natural Gas Market in 2026

The Central European natural gas market will play a crucial role in ensuring the region’s overall energy security in 2026. Following the supply shock triggered by Russia’s full‑scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, countries in the region have gradually adapted their supply models to the new geopolitical realities. A key element of this transformation has been liquefied natural...

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Historical narrative and applied history team

IEŚ Commentaries 1510
26 January 2026
Jędrzej Piekara - Historical narrative and applied history team

Russian-Venezuelan Relations as a Factor in Russian Geopolitics[1]

In the decade after the Soviet collapse, Moscow’s room to manoeuvre in Latin America and the Caribbean was limited due to the scarcity of resources and reorientation of Russian diplomacy towards the West, which naturally lowered the region’s strategic weight in Russian thinking. The turn came in the early 2000s as a re-entry organised around reciprocity in the United States...

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Baltic Team

IEŚ Commentaries 1509
26 January 2026
Marlena Gołębiowska | Aleksandra Kuczyńska-Zonik - Baltic Team

Small Languages, Big Models. Baltic States’ Strategies in the Fight for Digital Sovereignty in the Age of AI

The development of generative artificial intelligence depends on the quality and scale of the corpora on which models are trained. For countries with limited linguistic data resources in the digital space, low representation in global datasets poses a risk of technological marginalisation. To counter this threat, the Baltic states are implementing a range of strategies to...

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Collective Memory Team

IEŚ Commentaries 1508
22 January 2026
Robert Rajczyk - Collective Memory Team

Competition for right-wing voters in Hungary

The leader of the opposition party, Respect and Freedom (Tisztelet és Szabadság, TISZA), is trying to expand TISZA’s electorate appeal to far-right voters; Péter Magyar is formulating a demand for a ban on the entry of workers from outside the EU, starting from June 1, 2026, if he wins this April’s parliamentary elections. Furthermore, he is pretending to be a defender of...

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