Interpreting central and eastern Europe to western Europeans is a necessary but difficult or even thankless task during Russia’s imperial assertiveness in the Ukraine war.

The war has brought sovereign borders, strategic enlargement of the European Union and military/security issues back to its politics. That has resurrected Cold War divides in which the Soviet Union’s central and eastern European satellites were seen as in-between, liminal places.

The Bulgarian political scientist Ivan Krastev is one of the best-known writers on these matters. During a recent visit to Dublin, he spoke about them in the context of the Ukraine war, European and US elections. In a lecture for the 50th anniversary of the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, based in Dublin, he described how five crises are preoccupying the EU – the global economic turmoil since 2009-2012, mass immigration since the Syrian crisis of 2015, the Covid-19 pandemic, the Ukraine war and climate change.

Research he is conducting with the European Council on Foreign Relations shows how the responses to these crises vary in 11 states surveyed – nine EU members plus Britain and Switzerland. Germans worry most........

© The Irish Times