Bulgaria is appropriately considered the most pro-Ru European country. Polls show 40% think the Ru-Ukr war isn't Ru's fault and this is usually chalked up to traditional pro-Ru sentiment due to Ru's role in Bg independence from the Ottoman empire and shared Orthodoxy, but...🧵 the last few days suggest that this pro-Ru sentiment might be more superficial and a knee-jerk expression of a stereotype than a deeply held/felt position. The dismantlement of the Soviet Army monument slowly taking place in the middle of Sofia illustrates this point...

Confirms point, which should be clear to everyone by now: implementing Minsk meant "using Donbas to restructure all of Ukraine in Donbas' image", i.e. make all of Ukr a Ru proxy. When the shocked Pu finally realized that Ze wouldn't give in, he decided to invade...

https://twitter.com/bdtaylor_SU/status/1650889327163895809

Imo, the Medvedchuk TV ban point is a bit muddled in the piece. Maybe the Medvedchuk ban was the last straw, indeed, but the question is why. The piece isn't clear abt why, but the ban's importance could be construed in at least 3 ways...

Important piece

"..allowing pro-Russia politicians to keep their mandates for the time being is a hugely positive signal for Ukrainian democracy. It proves that rule of law, due process, and freedom of speech matter in Ukraine..."

https://twitter.com/ACEurasia/status/1636058431629950977

"for the time being" is key. Given the additional shift in the electorate away from pro-Ru positions due to the war, the next Ukr free/fair election's unlikely to return any politicians who hold ideologically pro-Ru positions...

Some interesting anecdotes, which add to the argument that Ru's anti-Western turn has little to do with NATO and everything to do with anger at *domestic developments* in places Ru felt entitled to control (Chechnya and Ukraine). Pu became paranoid US was helping them leave...

https://twitter.com/IgnatiusPost/status/1634018436803174402

but hard for the US to prevent this. US isn't responsible either for Chechnya's separatism or for Ukr's mobilization against manipulated elections. Both were due to Chechen/Ukr agency and the US role was minimal. If the US had deferred to Ru even more than it already did...

Mearsheimer just said that the US was bent on integrating Ukraine 🇺🇦 into the West and pursued it through NATO/EU expansion and Ukr democracy promotion. Who knew that Ukraine was more important to the US than to Russia. #APSA2022 According to JM, controlling Ukraine is existential to Russia so much so that they will escalate to nukes rather than lose. But Russia doesn’t want to conquer Ukraine. So why is it existential to control them? No explanation from Mearsheimer.

A 🧵for political scientists working on politics and society in Eastern Europe and Eurasia. @CambridgeUP is launching a new Elements Series on the region. The editors-- @LBustikova, @PetraGuasti, Gergana Yankova-Dimova, and I—are inviting pitches. 1/

Please, share widely! What is a Cambridge Element? It's a short book (20-30K words) with quick turnaround. Individual Elements are original, succinct, authoritative, and peer-reviewed. They are organized into a focused series that provides coverage of key topics in the field. 2/

Bulgarian govt alleges that numerous pundits, journalists, pollsters, and public figures received regular payments from the Russian embassy (~2K euro per month) to present Russian narratives in the media as independent analysis... Pro-Ru opinion makers retort that US foundations in Bulgaria give grants too. One big difference is that US funding is transparent, whereas the alleged Russian funding is under cover and deceptive. This is not just because the US is a democracy w rule of law and Ru isn't...

A 🧵on Yanukovych's 2014 removal to dispel some of the conspiracy talk out there. In short: it was not a coup! Rather, it was an ad hoc legal solution to power vacuum created by a crumbling executive. 1/ A coup is an "illegal and overt attempt by military or other elites within the state apparatus to unseat a sitting executive" (Powell & Thyne, 2011). The definition implies an elite-driven, not popular mobilization-driven process. Otherwise, revolutions would be coups. 2/

A 🧵on the significance of EPPO's arrests of former 🇧🇬 PM Borissov and associates on suspicion of EU funds fraud. This is the beginning of a big-risk/big-pay-off move by the EPPO and the reformists in the 🇧🇬 governing coalition... /1 The arrests demonstrate EPPO aims high, dispelling some fears that it might become clogged/distracted by minor cases. Kovesi shows she is motivated to uncover grand corruption, just as she did in Romania./2