Analysis
Information Sovereignty
Think Tank
Pro-Kremlin Disinformation in Ukraine — Five Key Messages
11 August 2022
Relative prosperity and stability in Central Europe are heavily indebted to the security order underwritten by the West. Subregional cooperation formats such as the V4, or the Three Seas Initiative, can never be alternatives to the EU, but only complementary formats.
Since its origins in the early 1990s, the Visegrád Group has progressed from being an initiative of post-Communist states whose imperative was to “return to the West” by joining the EU and NATO, to a much more ambiguous grouping who, at times, acted as a “dissident bloc” inside the EU. Some of its members came to be seen in controversial light because of the Western criticism of the state of democracy and the rule of law.
Despite these developments, however, the V4 has remained plugged into the Western liberal order, on which it heavily depended for security and stability.
In fact, it is only the presence of the EU and NATO which makes sustaining the V4 – together with its “dissident” demarches – possible in the first place.