As Bulgarians head to the polls this Sunday, a manufactured need for change risks producing a new strongman in former President Rumen Radev, who leads a centre-left coalition, speaks the language of protest and may yet steer Sofia closer to Moscow.

Péter Magyar’s Tisza party has won a constitutional majority, promising change not only for Hungary but for the V4 group and the whole of Europe. Is the European Union ready for this transformation?

Elections in Hungary marked the twilight of Moscow’s lingering shadow over European politics. Hungarian voters were primarily concerned with domestic issues – corruption, the economy, healthcare and public services. Yet the loudest chant on the streets, and the one carrying the most consequential implications, was unmistakable: Ruszkik, haza! – Russians,...

As someone in their late twenties, I do not remember a time when I felt proud to be Hungarian – Orbán made that difficult. He built a country many could no longer recognise as their own, yet that has begun to change, led by a generation that has never known...

One year after Donald Trump’s self-declared “Liberation Day”, Visegrad Insight sat down with Elisabeth Braw to examine how globalisation has fractured and what regional alliances can do to safeguard Europe’s economic resilience in the world’s new era of hard-power competition.

The Budapest Stock Exchange and bookmakers are already betting on an imminent change. Yet Viktor Orbán shows no sign of yielding, still insisting that only he represents the homeland and that ‘the homeland cannot be in opposition’. Read our special Easter holiday Weekly Outlook on Democratic and Economic Security.

Foreign influence operations do not create vulnerable societies. They exploit them. Influence operations are most effective when inspired by a massive propaganda machine that builds on existing fears and grievances.

Oil shocks have a new dimension in CEE. Russian Baltic and Black Sea oil infrastructure has been hit, temporarily halting up to 40 per cent of its oil export capacity.

Russia and Belarus would reap a fertiliser windfall from the Iran war, but their seaports are under attack from Ukrainian drones and legal siege by the Baltic states.

Iran’s attack on the Diego Garcia military base in the Indian Ocean marks a pivot in threat perception for most European capitals. Tehran fired two missiles with a range of roughly 4,000 kilometres – putting most of Europe in the crosshair. The kinetic risk is now real and CEE countries...