This paper examines the European Central Bank’s (ECB) monetary policy response to elevated inflation and geopolitical uncertainty during the period 2022–2025. In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, euro-area inflation reached multi-decade highs, posing serious challenges to price stability and financial market confidence. The study analyzes the ECB’s key policy measures, including rapid interest rate increases, adjustments to asset purchase programs, and the deployment of new policy tools aimed at stabilizing markets and anchoring inflation expectations. Using macroeconomic data and policy analysis, the paper evaluates whether these measures were effective in containing inflation without triggering financial instability. The findings highlight the trade-offs faced by central banks during overlapping economic shocks and provide policy-relevant lessons for future crisis management.

ABSTRACT Russia has threatened to use tactical nuclear weapons repeatedly in its war on Ukraine to intimidate and break the cohesion of NATO. Does such a strike potentially constitute a winning strategy? This article addresses this question via four waves of vignette-based survey experiments, two prior and two post Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, in Germany and the United States, two critical NATO members with diverse cultural sensibilities. Contrary to our expectation, we find that public attitudes in both countries are remarkably similar and favor in the case of a Russian tactical nuclear strike not a conciliatory but a retaliatory NATO response. Moreover, public attitudes following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have grown even more hawkish.

Purpose The article investigates the process of a slowing globalization, also referred to as slowbalization or deglobalization. It aims to present changes in international supply chains in the context of deglobalization. Design/methodology/approach There are several factors that have particularly contested the sense and significance of globalization. They include the COVID-19 pandemic (characterized by lockdowns, closing borders and disrupting supply chains) and civilization challenges (aggravated after 2020), the most significant of which is the US–China trade war. Russia's invasion of Ukraine, combined with the imposition of economic sanctions on Russia, has changed the assumptions of the trade policy of Western countries, mostly the US tariffs, all of which have brought in the process of decoupling. Findings The article presents the fragmentation of supply chains and the relocation of industrial resources, along with a discussion of the accompanying causes, especially in relation to the Chinese economy. Practical implications The article designates the geopolitical, geographical and cultural dimensions of selective deglobalization. Originality/value Noticeably, deglobalization trends have been uneven over time, in various countries worldwide, and in relation to products/industries.

ABSTRACT This article examines how social ties are actively constructed, recalibrated or severed by migrants navigating a reality of double war, defined as the simultaneous exposure to war in both their countries of origin and destination. The study draws on thirty‐seven in‐depth interviews with migrants from Ukraine, Russia and Belarus who immigrated to Israel between 2022 and 2024 following Russia's full‐scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and later experienced renewed insecurity during the Israel–Hamas War. Engaging three main bodies of literature, transnationalism, social network theory and migration in contexts of war and displacement, this study explores how migrants manage ties across a geo‐social triangle: the origin country, the host country and third countries. The analysis identifies two relational phases: an initial overload and triage of social ties, followed by a phase of relational calibration, in which migrants make strategic and emotionally and morally charged decisions about with whom to connect, support or withdraw from. These findings offer a conceptual understanding of social ties as dynamic and ethically negotiated responses to instability. By positioning migrants' agency under conditions of insecurity, the study contributes new analytic tools for examining how war reshapes relational life across transnational space.

This study examines how media consumption shapes individuals’ ability to distinguish true from false information and their response biases in the context of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Drawing on signal detection theory, it analyzes sensitivity (the ability to discern truth from falsehood) and absolute response bias (the strength of the tendency to accept or reject claims) separately. Data come from a survey conducted in 19 European and American countries (N = 19,037) in 2022 during Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine. Reliance on newspapers is linked to higher sensitivity for both pro- and anti-Russia statements, whereas television news shows no such effect. Social media use is unrelated to sensitivity, but corresponds with more balanced evaluations, while messenger-based news consumption predicts lower sensitivity and stronger biases. In some cases, alternative media use is also associated with increased response bias. Cross-national comparisons show that press freedom is linked to higher sensitivity to pro-Russia claims and to asymmetric response biases for pro- and anti-Russia frames, consistent with dominant media narratives.

The conflict between Russia and Ukraine escalated into a full-scale war following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Since then, both parties have engaged in several negotiation efforts aimed at resolving the conflict. However, from all those negotiations conducted none of them produce any agreement or any framework to resolve the conflict. This is seen by the researcher as a deadlocked situation within the negotiation. By using qualitative descriptive research with document analysis using Faure’s deadlock within negotiation framework, this research indicates that negotiation between Russia and Ukraine for resolving their conflict has reached a deadlocked situation. This research also found that several factors such as process, strategy, and contextual factor that are contributing to the deadlock situation within the negotiation. The findings suggest that these factors are creating a condition where during negotiations strategies adopted by both countries during negotiation and social, political, and legal pressure from within the countries makes them have very little maneuver during the negotiation, which creates a lack of any substantial agreement from the negotiation to resolve the conflict. This research contributes to the limited amount of discourse regarding the negotiation conditions that occurred between Russia and Ukraine for resolving their conflict, offering a new perspective by applying Faure’s indicators and factors such as Process, Strategy, and Contextual towards this issue.

The 2022 Qandy Qantar (‘Bloody January’) protests in Kazakhstan and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine the following month have galvanized significant shifts in Kazakhstan’s nation-building policies under President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. Drawing on media and social-media analysis, survey data, and interviews with national-patriotic intellectuals and officials, this article shows how these groups have been co-opted into Tokayev’s political institutions, such as the new National Qurultay, an appointed consultative body under the President with a mandate to promote national unity and social cohesion, while the Assembly of the People of Kazakhstan, created by Tokayev's predecessor Nursultan Nazarbayev, has been marginalized. But while Tokayev promotes Kazakh language and culture, commonly framed as Kazakhisation, his approach remains cautious and avoids overt exclusion of other ethnic groups. The study argues that post-Nazarbayev nation-building is being recalibrated through institutional reforms shaped by the dual pressures of the 2022 Qandy Qantar and the war in Ukraine, signalling a gradual, state-managed shift from a civic-based identity toward a controlled process of ethnocratization.

This article examines how international media construct the legitimacy of war, focusing on coverage of two conflict declarations: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s military offensive in Gaza. Using a Critical Discourse Analysis framework, the study analyzes reports from The Guardian (UK) and The New York Post (US) to explore how discursive strategies shape public understandings of aggression, victimhood, and moral accountability. Despite a substantial body of research on media coverage of conflicts, comparative studies analyzing discursive strategies across distinct geopolitical contexts remain underrepresented. As such, this study seeks to answer the central research question: how do international media construct and differentiate the legitimacy of war in the context of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s military offensive in Gaza, and what ideological functions are revealed through this comparative analysis? Previous studies have typically focused on single-case analyses, often overlooking how narratives vary across different geopolitical landscapes. This study addresses this gap, revealing clear asymmetries in media coverage: Ukraine is framed through explicit condemnation of Russian aggression, emotive depictions of civilian suffering, and authoritative quotations of Ukrainian and Western leaders. In contrast, Gaza coverage situates Israeli military action within security and counterterrorism narratives, downplays structural context, and marginalizes Palestinian perspectives through selective quotation. This comparative analysis offers unique insights into how the divergent framing of these events reveals broader ideological functions in news discourse, challenging single-case studies by showing how media representations normalize particular narratives of violence across different geopolitical contexts.

ABSTRACT The article argues that dynamics of politicisation and de-politicisation in foreign policy can be fruitfully analysed from a two-level perspective. This perspective highlights the interplay between domestic and international drivers of politicisation and de-politicisation as well as the strategic agency of governments in shaping the two counter-processes. The article illustrates its argument with a case study on the politicisation and (failed) de-politicisation of German military support for Ukraine. The case study demonstrates how the politicisation of the issue in German domestic politics was driven by a diverse range of domestic politicising agents (‘inside-out’ politicisation) who were able to tie in with international sources of politicisation (‘outside-in’ politicisation). In this highly politicised two-level context, the Scholz government tried, but largely failed, to de-politicise its decision-making by securitising Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in German political discourse. These dynamics critically shaped the Scholz government’s often criticised approach to delivering weapons to Ukraine.

The purpose of this research is to analyze the efficiency behavior of emerging, developed and cryptocurrency markets before and after the invasion of Ukraine. In methodological terms, a study was made of the multifractal properties and entropy of the series of returns in a 5-minute frequency from 02/14/2022 to 03/31/2022 of market indices of the G-20 countries and the 10 largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization. It was possible to verify an increase in the degree of randomness of the series analyzed after the Russian invasion, meeting what was expected of an efficient market. However, none of the markets behaved completely at random, and the existence of positive long-term correlations in returns was identified, which became more expressive in developed countries. The cluster analysis, which revealed that after the invasion, the behavior of the markets became more homogeneous, indicating that geopolitical uncertainties have the ability to make the behavior of the markets converge in the short term. Therefore, investors should bear in mind the need to readjust their predictive models to suit new market behavior, as well as to reduce abnormal profitability expectations, given the greater degree of randomness in the markets.

This article examines domicide and homemaking among Ukrainian temporary labor migrants in Israel, shaped by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the Israel-Hamas war. Living between two wars compels these women to navigate both the destruction and the creation of home, producing fragile and layered attachments across borders. Based on 26 in-depth interviews and participant observation, the study analyzes four interconnected domains of homemaking and displacement: (im)possibility, community building, familiarity, and (in)security, drawing on theories of home and ethnographies of conflict. The findings show that homemaking is simultaneously enabled and disrupted by displacement, temporariness, and domicide. Although violence and loss undermine stability, everyday practices of care, social connection, and the cultivation of familiarity through religion, pilgrimage, tourism, and leisure allow women to sustain belonging in Israel while mourning destroyed or inaccessible homes in Ukraine. The article demonstrates that homemaking in times of war becomes a continuous process of resilience, adaptation, and negotiation amid insecurity and transnational displacement.

This article identifies Central Europe as a laboratory and stress-test for internal disintegration within the European Union, where states use the Union’s own rules to advance sovereignty-first agendas from inside membership. The Visegrad Group’s shift from a cohesive veto bloc during the 2015 migration crisis to fracture after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, alongside Hungary’s consolidation of a migration security doctrine within the EU, point to a shared underlying pattern. The article theorises this pattern as sovereignty through selective integration and specifies its operation through three interlocking practices: strategic non-compliance, compliance minimalism, and governance hardening. Drawing on earlier case study work on the Visegrad Group and on Hungary, the analysis shows how this triad operates at both regional and national scales, why it stabilised during the migration crisis, and why it fractured under conditions of direct hard security exposure. The article clarifies the scope conditions under which selective integration can endure, the circumstances under which it breaks down, and the ways in which it produces internal disintegration without formal exit. It concludes by outlining implications for EU crisis governance and by indicating how the proposed triad can travel to other domains, including fiscal policy, digital regulation, and internal security.

<p><span>Jack Balkin’s Memory and Authority: The Uses of History in Constitutional Interpretation brings into conversation the scholarly insights of constitutional theory, history, and the growing field of “the politics of memory,” especially the concept of the “memory entrepreneur.”</span></p> <p><span>Balkin appropriately connects the memory wars in American constitutional law back to Eastern European memory wars during the World Wars and their aftermath. Prompted by Balkin, we turn to Jan Kubik and Michael Bernhard edited volume <i>Twenty Years After Communism</i> (2014), which has become even more widely influential after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and a new round of Eastern European memory wars. They propose four categories of memory entrepreneurs (“mnemonic actors”) in post-Soviet countries: “mnemonic warriors” who claim a single “true” interpretation of the past, opposed to all others who cultivate “wrong” or “false” interpretations; “mnemonic pluralists” who embrace multiple narratives and traditions; “mnemonic abnegators” who deny the significance of the past in favor of the present; and “mnemonic prospectives” who have a faith in an inevitable future (e.g., utopian Marxist historical materialists).</span></p> <p><span>We suggest this taxonomy may be a helpful guide for American constitutional politics. The “memory pluralist” category is perhaps the majority of American constitutional law professors, <i>maybe</i> even a plurality of the U.S. Supreme Court and the federal and state bench, who do not give <i>exclusive</i> weight to history, but still give substantial weight to history (e.g., Philip Bobbit’s modalities, Balkin’s “living originalism” and his “thin originalism.”).</span></p> <p><span>Some “thick originalists” are more “Memory Anti-Pluralists” than “Warriors.” We reserve the category of “Memory Warrior” for those constitutional interpreters who are consciously fighting for an exclusive, comprehensive national narrative of us vs. them. These warriors include ideological originalists (especially the ones who seem to rely on a general narrative arc rather than specific historical evidence), but they also may include the “history-and-tradition” conservatives, common-good constitutionalists, and perhaps some progressive-left memory warriors who have a more exclusive interpretation of past events than pluralists do.</span></p> <p><span>Balkin rightly criticizes originalism for its “memory entrepreneurialism” that narrows the field of who “counts” and who is excluded, exacerbating constitutional law’s democratic deficit. We think the “memory warrior” category helps sort out the more problematic approaches, and we suggest a solution: a high burden of proof about consensus and public meaning to mitigate this democratic deficit, to reduce judicial legitimacy problems, and to slow down “warrior” judicial activism.</span></p>

From a historical perspective, the balance of power has been one of the most important issues in the international system. Efforts to maintain or change this balance have traditionally been undertaken by great powers or groups of great powers, often triggering significant international events. In this context, Russia's invasion of Ukraine—which has sparked a global confrontation—represents one of the most important geopolitical developments of the twenty-first century. The purpose of this article is to explain the impact of Russia's invasion of Ukraine on the international system. Aside from a limited number of studies that anticipated such changes, this topic has received little systematic attention. The article uses a causal approach, combining library-based data and empirical observations. The findings indicate that Russia, China, and their allies, on one side, and Europe and the United States, on the other, have strengthened their alliances and are moving toward a bipolar or multipolar system. Although it is clear that the unipolar system is declining, it remains uncertain whether the emerging system will be bipolar or multipolar. Because changes in the international system directly affect the capabilities of states, this research is important for informing effective foreign policy decisions during the current transition from unipolarity to multipolarity.

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Finland reconsidered its longstanding policy of military non-alignment, ultimately deciding to apply for NATO membership. As a NATO member since 1952, Türkiye played a key role in this process, which sparked extensive discussion in Turkish media. This study investigates how Finland and its NATO accession are evaluated across two Turkish media registers – Sözcü news reports and Ekşi Sözlük interactive discussions – through a corpus-based approach grounded in register theory. The research explores how the situational characteristics of each register shape the expression of evaluative language, both overt and covert. Employing keyword and concordance analyses combined with qualitative interpretation, the study examines evaluative and non-evaluative uses of language, with particular focus on the term country and its surrounding context on a positive-negative axis. The findings reveal that news reports tend to express evaluation subtly, often embedding it in covert forms that align with societal norms and values. In contrast, interactive discussions rely on more direct and explicit evaluative language. The analysis highlights how patterns of evaluation are shaped by the communicative functions of each register. Portrayals of Finland also diverge: news media frame Finland’s foreign policy in a largely positive light while expressing criticism of its domestic leadership, whereas online discussions emphasize Finland’s military strength and quality of life, yet raise scepticism about its NATO membership. Overall, this study illustrates how differing media registers contribute to distinct constructions of a country’s portrayal.

The determination of a child’s origin is a key element in the realization of the child’s personal rights, including the right to a name, nationality, the right to know one’s parents, and the right to receive their care. This issue has become particularly relevant in the context of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, as access to Ukrainian state authorities is absent in the temporarily occupied territories, and civil status acts are de facto registered by the bodies of the occupation administration. The article examines the key international standards for the protection of the rights of children born in the temporarily occupied territories in the process of determining their parentage. In particular, the provisions of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War and its Additional Protocol, as well as the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, are analyzed. The reports of international organizations (PACE, the UN) on the state of compliance with the rights of Ukrainian children in the temporarily occupied territories are also analyzed. The author examines the impact of the provisions of these documents on amendments to Ukrainian legislation aimed at adapting international standards. Particular attention is paid to legislative initiatives regulating the procedure for the state registration of births in the temporarily occupied territories, as well as to their compliance with international standards. As a result of the analysis of international treaties, three key functions performed by international standards for the protection of children’s rights within national legislation are identified: normative, promotional, and procedural.It is concluded that certain international standards implemented in national legislation, such as the simplification of birth registration procedures and the issuance of birth certificates, as well as the consideration of documents issued by the occupation administration as evidence of the fact of birth, contribute to the observance of the child’s rights to immediate birth registration, to a name and the acquisition of Ukrainian nationality, to know one’s parents and receive their care, and to the preservation of identity. All measures taken by state authorities are aimed at ensuring the best interests of the child, as required by international law.

This article explores how structural inequality within the international system enables powerful countries to selectively ignore or violate international law while forcing weak countries to abide by the rules. Through four case studies - the 2016 South China Sea Arbitration Case, Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the United States' invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the WTO DS108 dispute - this article reveals how the veto power and weak enforcement mechanism of the United Nations Security Council gave rise to a legal system with privileges evade accountability, small countries find the law impractical and may not serve as a useful way of defense. However, the case of the WTO shows that even the strongest countries can be forced to abide by the rules when institutions provide credible automated mechanisms. The study reveals that the authority of international law depends on the design of the system: in the absence of an independent enforcement mechanism, the law ultimately submits to power; and after the establishment of an effective mechanism, powerful countries can also achieve compliance. The study points out that reform should focus on improving transparency, strengthening accountability mechanisms, and establishing mechanisms that link violations to substantial costs.

Following the 2004-2007 ‘Big Bang’ enlargement, the European Union turned away from further enlargement prospects. Projects such as the European Neighbourhood Policy were launched with the express goal of limiting enlargement and outstanding enlargement commitments were neglected. The EU’s apathy towards enlargement seemed to change in February 2022, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Ukraine applied for membership four days after Russia’s invasion, with Moldova and Georgia following less than a week later. Four months later, the EU granted Moldova and Ukraine candidate status. As the EU claims that the accession process is merit-based, with a candidate’s progression being directly related to their compliance with the Copenhagen accession conditions, that raises two questions: Why did the EU so radically change its view on enlargement, and were Moldova and Ukraine treated favourably in the accession process? Using a comparative framework to assess the candidacy progression of Moldova and Ukraine against four Western Balkan candidates - Albania, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia – this paper argues that Moldova and Ukraine have been treated more favourably in the accession process, and that the reasons for this treatment cannot be attributed to superior compliance with the Copenhagen criteria.

The article analyses the impact of changes in the security architecture in the Bal- tic Sea Region (BSR) on Poland’s geopolitical culture. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 led, on the one hand, to Finland and Sweden joining NATO and, on the other, to a crisis in relations between Poland and its partners in Central Europe. This resulted in a new opening in Poland’s policy towards its northern partners, who began to be seen as key allies in its multidimensional security policy. This la- test diplomatic opening was in line with earlier investment and economic activities related to the BSR and ongoing socio-cultural processes, which have brought the countries of this region closer to Polish society. Therefore, according to the authors, we should speak in this case of a “Northern Turn” in Poland’s geopolitical culture, which means that this culture has been enriched with a new direction that is of great importance for multidimensional security and strategic development. The article analyses three spheres of this phenomenon: formal, which pertains to the analysis of international system dynamics; practical, which relates to actual po- litical and strategic decisions; and popular, which reveals transformations in the spheres of culture and identity.

Do External Threats Reduce Affective Polarization? An Experiment on Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine