Protests in Serbia's second largest city of Novi Sad, after a part of the recently renovated rail station collapsed, killing 14 people, mostly of young age, and leaving three people in a critical condition. Chinese and Hungarian companies were involved in the works, and many safety standards seem to not have been observed. The Serbian regime invented the following scheme: whenever a substantial investment deal is signed between the state and a Chinese company, the Chinese company would officially ask for the details of the deal to be declared a secret.

The fundamental question for researchers of international relations vis-a-vis explaining Russian aggression in the second half of the 20th and during the 21st century is whether that aggression can be attributed to ideology or inherent imperialism.

A 🧵 If a researcher believes that the USSR expanded only because of the idea of communist globalism, then there is no reason for post-communist Russia to, from the very beginning in the 1990s, exert its will through force on the Moldovan or Georgian nation, which it did.

A 🧵on divisions in society and one way of healing them

Trump's New York rally is like going down a very dark rabbit hole. In Europe, a gathering with such radically right slogans would definitely end with a torchlight procession and not with Hulk Hogan ripping his shirt off.

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1850639517281034317

It's reminiscent most of the Brexit discourse. The promise of putting the economy back to work for the people through protectionism, getting rid of immigrants, promoting a fear that the real America is being replaced by outsiders and that the solution is exchanging the concepts of integration and cooperation for isolation and autarchy.

The graph on the left shows the Georgian ruling party's result (orange) vs. the exit poll by Edison research (Blue) in previous electoral cycles.

The graph on the right shows the percentage of the vote won by the Georgian ruling party in Tbilisi (blue) and the provinces (orange).
Even if you've never followed the electoral process in parliamentary countries, you can see that the Georgian ruling party was on a downward trend, which with great opposition mobilization to the creeping autocracy could not have possibly been reversed, certainly not to such an extent.

I caught Putin's BRICS speech near the end, since I was at an interview for an institute position (yes, it seems the prodigal son is returning to academia). Putin is very confident in his manner, he even admitted to cooperating with North Korea militarily directly. This confidence is not due to Ukraine's weakness on the battlefield, it's tied to Western divisivness and a lack of a coherent postwar strategy for Ukraine.

A 🧵on what BRICS means for Russia and its actual meaning. Russia uses BRICS in its propaganda to portray an opposing bloc of developing countries to Western developed economies. The goal of the Kremlin is to recreate a Cold War East vs. West discourse and, since it no longer leads any meaningful bloc of states, BRICS is used as a prop.

Why do non-Americans voice their opinions on the US presidential elections?

A 🧵 For starters, let me make myself clear - I am a European. I'm not a person cosplaying an American like Ian Miles Cheong. There are many US social phenomena that baffle me - politicizing religion, deifying the rich, believing that guns are a human right, the death penalty...

In Russia, there are those committing the killing, those applauding the killing, those managing the killing and those who oppose the killing. The most obnoxious group of all isn't among these. This group is the one pretending that absolutely nothing is going on. Those social ostriches, with their heads buried in material comfort, fill online platforms like Twitter or Instagram with their holiday photos from Thailand, visits to the coffee shop or their new business endeavors. The most infantile among them post mediocre anime designs.

Moscow authorities removed all flowers commemorating the October 7 massacre placed in front of the Jewish Cultural Center near the synagogue in the city center. This is not only tied to the unofficial ban on all collective action, but with fear of unrest of the Muslim population. Despite the Kremlin pointing the finger of blame on Ukraine and the US for the recent string of terror attacks, it's clear to the Russian leadership that in fact it's the Islamist organizations that are behind it.

Today is October 5, the day of the fall of Milosevic's regime in Yugoslavia, which marked the start of the second wave of democratization in post-communist Europe, from Ukraine to Kyrgyzstan.

A 🧵about whether October 5 failed or succeeded in the long run. At the moment, Serbia is a hybrid regime tending toward autocracy, with the same two-prong nationalistic discourse from the Milosevic era: either the West is trying to destroy the Serbian nation or Serbia's neighbors are trying to destroy it, while being supported by the West.

There are some fundamental reasons why Ukraine is being used as a shield against Russia and not treated as an ally by the US and Europe. These reasons are deeply ingrained in culture and psyche, and aren't a product of everyday politics.

A 🧵 The first reason is Europe outsourcing its security to the US during the Cold War era and up to the present. The US is culturally, mentally and physically far away. This distance makes it pay attention only to the big players on the board - it sees Russia, it misses Ukraine.

Whatever you do, don't compare the war against Ukraine with the war in the Middle East. Don't write - why don't you pay attention to this war crime in Ukraine and why do pay attention to this war crime in Palestine/Lebanon/Israel or vice versa. These are completely different conflicts with different actors and histories behind them. In a globalized world, states are intertwined. That's why we see Iranian drones bombing Ukraine, Russian planes bombing Syria or we see US weapons systems being used by Israel and Ukraine.

Here's a concise overview of the possible endings (some permanent, others not) of the Russo-Ukranian War, as well as the actors involved and their intentions. The main actors are Russia and Ukraine. The secondary actors, without which the war could not continue in this capacity are: China, North Korea and Iran for Russia and the US and Europe for Ukraine. Not counting the many neutral countries profiting from the war indirectly.

The "great culture" argument is often heard from supporters of Russian imperialism. The point being that Russia is somehow entitled to own the nations neighboring it because its empire has created great works of literature (most often mentioned in discussions). The German nation has created not only great works of literature, but can boast outstanding achievements in philosophy, music and engineering , to name a few. That however didn't stop it from becoming consumed with imperialism and believing that conquest is the right way to go.

Yuliya Navalnaya has touched on the topic of decolonization in her public address. In her speech she equates the decolonization paradigm with "carving up Russia into a dozen small and unthreatening statelets". I would like to touch on this topic as well.

https://twitter.com/teamnavalny/status/1830948210757480679

First of all, the most troubling part of her address is the claim that various repressed and conquered ethnicities in Russia, which never democratized and never accepted its colonial nature, share "a common background and cultural context". This is assimilatory rhetoric.

Something that needs to be formulated precisely - no moral person is objecting that Russian dissidents are now free. I don't even believe that they should be criticized for catering to Russian liberal audience, which is their base. However, there is a certain fear of appeasement in the air, fear that Washington may once again go down the road it took in 2014 when Russia attacked Ukraine for the first time and in 2008 when Russia attacked Georgia.

If Russia has genuine "security concerns", regarding the strategic balance, both conventional and nuclear, then it's not handling the issue very well or successfully, to say the least.

A 🧵 Proposing that Russian expansionist aggression stems primarily from the realist perspective, and an updated version of Cold War calculations, makes Russia look even more unhinged, as it seeks to overthrow the current international order, not find or better its place in it.

Today, the Serbian hybrid regime forbade a socio-cultural event, which brings together young Albanians and Serbs, from being held in Belgrade. Previously, a few dozen sports hooligans were tasked to stage a "spontaneous protest" in front of the venue. I don't even comprehend what long-term political gain there is to be had from such an act, but maybe it's not as much because of gain as it is a product of recent whitewashing of the Serbian regime in regards to making good money from trading ammunition which ends up in Ukraine.

While everyone's busy quantifying modifiers from the new Russian minister of war like it's a Hearts of Iron game, I propose you ponder how does a country in war and totalitarian repression mode revert back to peacetime existence without achieving total victory? You can't wish away a country the political system of which is based on war and repression. If previously Russia, as a politeconomic entity, lived on exporting gas and oil, it now depends solely on war to sustain its political carcass and the structure of its elites reflects this

Up until the end of WWII, when wars of aggression were deligitimized, countries aimed at projecting strength by any means. Afterwards, aggressive countries started to intentionally project weakness so as to justify their aggression through victimhood.

https://twitter.com/DimitarBechev/status/1789248733911077371

How else can one explain Russia publicly expressing its fear of not only Ukraine, but of small countries such as Georgia and Moldova. Imagine a dominant actor in the region feeling threatened by its much weaker neighbors, the notion is absurd, but it's a tool, not reality.

Today a want to talk to you about love. Love as an instrument of politics, that is. Inspired by the Balkan experience of the Eurovision contest (I'm deadly serious).

A🧵 It's easy to imagine any center of power, such as the one of the state, to manipulate the masses through hate and resentment. These are powerful collective emotions for certain, but only through love, do the masses feel good about themselves while engaging in aggression.