Lithuania’s LRT Crisis as a Test of Civil Resilience and Engagement

The recent developments around Lithuania's public broadcaster, LRT, caught a lot of attention both within the country and internationally. The situation runs deeper than just legislative efforts to reform LRT's management. On one hand, this issue largely reflects the effects of the extreme plurality of the country’s political system. On the other hand, it also shows how the Lithuanian public perceives its national broadcaster.

Reconfiguration of Power in the Middle East: The Russian and Post-Soviet Dimension

The revival of the Israel–Greece–Cyprus partnership reflects a broader realignment in the Eastern Mediterranean driven by Turkey’s expanding military posture, competition over energy routes, and debates on Gaza’s postwar future. These dynamics are embedded in larger connectivity projects such as IMEC and the Middle Corridor, while provoking sharp resistance from Ankara. Russia’s increasingly ambivalent stance suggests diminishing readiness to back Turkish ambitions as its own priorities shift toward Ukraine, Central Asia, and pragmatic engagement with Washington.

BESA Post-Soviet Conflicts Research Digest No. 27 (December 2025)

The publication portfolio of the PSCR program in December 2025 was as diverse as to cover the security problems of the Baltic states, the new U.S. National Security Strategy, antisemitic tropes in post-Soviet wars, the difficulties faced by the post-Soviet Jewish immigrants in Poland, and Iranian officials’ reaction to Armenia’s foreign policies.

The Baltic Alarm: Why Europe Must Listen to Its Eastern Frontier

The Baltic states are preparing for war — not a hypothetical conflict decades away, but one their leaders believe could come within five years. “Russia is a threat today, tomorrow and in the long future,” Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo warned this month. The question is whether Western Europe will listen.

Iranian Fears to Lose Armenia to the West and Israel: Will Pressure on Yerevan Succeed?

A single visit by an Armenian deputy foreign minister to Israel was enough to trigger sharp anxiety in Tehran, revealing how sensitive Armenia’s foreign policy choices have become for Iran’s regional security calculations. Fears of the Zangezur (“Trump”) Corridor, Israeli influence on Iran’s northern border, and strategic encirclement have pushed Tehran to apply open pressure—forcing Yerevan into visible rhetorical retreat and renewed declarations of loyalty

Post-Soviet Jewish refugees in Poland: Status and Perspectives

Poland has unexpectedly become a key space of encounter between local Jewish life and thousands of Jews from Ukraine and other post-Soviet countries displaced by war and political repression. Based on first-hand observations and direct work with refugees, the text reveals hidden tensions, linguistic dynamics, and institutional blind spots that shape everyday Jewish existence in contemporary Poland. It also raises a provocative question: why does a country with such a large aliyah potential remain on the margins of Israel’s repatriation priorities?

Monthly Monitoring of Analytical Publications on Post-Soviet Conflicts

Selecting an overarching frame for the academic works we chose for the December issue of our monitoring bulletin, we noticed that all of them, in one way or another, touch upon the civilizational influence of the Soviet Union—an influence that has not ended even today, 34 years after the USSR ceased to exist, in December. The post-Soviet space—and, more broadly, the post-Soviet perimeter of geopolitical influence—is not merely a historical shorthand for the past. It remains an operative category, a geopolitical reality today—already, in just a few days, in the second quarter of the twenty-first century.

The 2025 U.S. National Security Strategy and the Conflicts at the Post-Soviet Space

This paper explores how the 2025 U.S. National Security Strategy reframes American thinking on power, sovereignty, and conflict management in the post-Soviet space. Focusing on the practical logic embedded in the Strategy rather than its declarative language, it traces how a shift toward pragmatism, selective engagement, and economic priorities alters the environment in which regional conflicts unfold. The analysis invites the reader to reconsider familiar post-Soviet crises through a new strategic lens that emphasizes interests, leverage, and deal-making over ideology and institutional norms.

Antisemitic Conspiracy Narratives in the Post-Soviet Geopolitics

"Instrumentalization of antisemitism,” which means using this topic in isolation from real problems for political purposes, primarily to discredit opponents, has been used repeatedly in the post-Soviet space. Thus, since Russia’s succession and appending of the Ukrainian Crimea peninsula and active military and diplomatic involvement on the side of Eastern Ukraine separatists against the Ukrainian pro-European regime in 2014 and till now, both Kyiv and Moscow have viewed the Jewish world as a positive asset for the achievement of their immediate and strategic goals.

The Geography Trap: Cases of Kazakhstan and Baltic States

Kazakhstan should take notice. Moscow has a long record of turning yesterday’s partners into today’s expendable liabilities. Diversifying trade routes, investing in non-Russian infrastructure and reducing exposure to Russian transit systems are not luxuries; they are survival strategies.

PSCRP