Russia is paying increasing attention to Egypt, building on Soviet-Egyptian relations. Since the end of 2024, when Moscow lost its long-time ally Syria, Egypt has been gaining in importance as a in the Middle East. Relations are flourishing in culture, education, and science. Cairo has become a base for Russia’s foreign media to spread Moscow’s perspective on the world. But regardless of the fact that Rosatom is building its largest nuclear power plant outside Russia in Egypt, the economic and political substance of the relationship remains limited.

Telegram cultivates the image of a free, uncensored medium. In authoritarian states, this makes the platform attractive for those who fear state censorship or repression. Yet, for individual users, Telegram itself has significant security gaps that authorities can use to persecute opponents. Telegram has developed into a hybrid medium that enables private communication in encrypted chats and reaches an audience of millions beyond the established mass media in public channels. The operators’ principle of not intervening in a moderating manner creates a Janus-faced Telegram. On the one hand, it serves critical groups as an organisational platform and mouthpiece, and, on the other, the promise of anonymity attracts shady characters who abuse the platform’s freedom. The Ukrainian authorities are not the only ones alarmed by the platform’s influence on national security.

Magazines are snapshots of the times. The magazine OSTEUROPA was founded in the Weimar Republic, continued to publish during the Nazi dictatorship, represented a typical medium of the Federal Republic during the Germany’s division, and is now produced in Berlin. Its history reflects two historical processes. One concerns German attitudes towards Eastern Europe. These move between curiosity and alienation, friendship and enmity, co-operation and confrontation. The other is the development of societies and states in Europe’s east. OSTEUROPA accompanies and analyses these societies from different perspectives. The journal understands politics and culture not in opposition to one another, but in relation to one another. As a matter of publishing policy, OSTEUROPA goes against the prevailing trend of specialisation and fragmentation of the public sphere.

The magazine OSTEUROPA uses texts and maps to convey knowledge. The texts tell a story in succession, the maps visualise the juxtaposition of the information. Maps show geographical, socio-economic, and political content and enable the visualization of complexity and simultaneity in space. The OSTEUROPA archive consists of 550 maps, which are available in digital and printed formats. They cover expanses of territory, countries and regions, functional dimensions of Europe, natural resources and the energy industry, historical topics, and matters of comparative politics such as elections. But how does a map find its form? A look at the map workshop provides some answers.

Before the 2025 presidential election in Poland, Rafał Trzaskowski, the candidate of the liberal Civic Coalition, had long been ahead in the polls. In the runoff election, he then lost to PiS candidate Karol Nawrocki. The mood in society was marked by weariness with the ongoing conflict between the political camps and a longing for a new beginning. Everyday issues such as health care reform, which was considered urgent, did not play a major role in the election campaign. Instead, security issues such as attitudes toward the war in Ukraine and migration dominated.

Russia’s leadership has further tightened its centralised control over the country’s regions since mid-2024. After the invasion of Ukraine, the revolving door of personnel changes had slowed for two and a half years. Between June 2024 and July 2025, however, new governors were installed in 13 regions, while the rotation of other high-ranking positions in the regions also accelerated. With the new appointments, numerous participants in the so-called “special operation” have obtained high office. Some are members of the army. Others are administrative officials previously deployed in the “new territories”.

Milan Kundera’s essay “The Kidnapped West” is a classic. In it, he sharply distinguished Central Europe from Russia. Unlike Russia, Central Europe, he wrote, is characterised by the greatest degree of diversity in the most confined amount of space. Cultural richness shapes the identity of Poles, Hungarians, and Czechoslovakians and inspires them to act together. In 1990, Central Europeans began their “return to Europe.” They wanted democracy, pluralism, and prosperity. Today, three of the four states are threatened with a relapse into predemocratic conditions. Kundera is not responsible for the authoritarian turn. But his essay suggested that Central Europe was exceptional, obscured serious modernization deficits, and encouraged the suppression of fundamental truths. However, it remains key to understanding the mixture of inferiority complex and overconfidence that characterizes today’s Central European elites.

The Russian social network Odnoklassniki shows how the Putin regime has increasingly come to see social media as part of its authoritarian media strategy. Originally launched as an independent and private company, the platform is now in state hands and is being instrumentalised - for propaganda and war purposes, as well as for influencing the federal elections in Germany. Odnoklassniki is a biotope of “digital authoritarianism”.

The media market in Ukraine has changed radically since the start of Russia’s fullscale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022: the era of oligarchic media dominance is over, while social media has gained significantly more importance. Despite all the war-related challenges and structural changes, Ukrainian public discourse has preserved a relative degree of pluralism. Ukrainian society can still choose from a large number of different periodicals, channels, platforms, and other largely independent means of mass communication to receive relevant social and political news.