Over the course of more than a quarter century of Putin’s rule, political emigration from Russia has transformed from isolated cases of the expulsion of individual “inconvenient” oligarchs from the country to the outflow of the intellectual and cultural elite who dared to express public disagreement with the Kremlin’s policies....
Growing hybrid threats to the UK from Russia
After the start of the Russian Federation’s full-scale war against Ukraine in 2022, Britain became a priority target for hybrid operations by Russian intelligence services for a number of reasons. Firstly, because of its military leadership in NATO and its active position in supporting Ukraine. It was the first to...
Britain sets course for its own payment system
London, February 2026. The heads of the UK's largest banks are preparing for a historic step in financial policy: the first coordinated meeting to discuss the creation of a national payments system, an alternative to the international payment networks Visa and Mastercard. The meeting, chaired by Barclays UK CEO Wim...
The pre-election confrontation between Viktor Orbán and Peter Magyar for the future of Hungary
The Hungarian parliamentary elections scheduled for April 2026 could be a fateful moment not only for Hungary, which V. Orban has been leading for over fifteen years, but also for him personally. His power, authority and the system that he had built for himself for so long have faltered and...
How Fico is contributing to the corrupt degradation of the Slovak establishment
After joining the EU in 2004, the Slovak government began to make great efforts to build democratic institutions and a transparent law enforcement and judicial system. In fact, this was one of the key requirements for Slovakia when joining the European Union. Slovakia, as a country that was part of...
The Hamburg case and the security of the EU’s defence infrastructure
In early February 2026, German law enforcement agencies in Hamburg, together with their European partners, carried out a series of arrests on suspicion of sabotage of German military ships. This incident revealed not only the vulnerability of the modern defence industry, but also profound socio-political issues: who has access to...
From bilateral control to global instability after START III
With the expiration of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) on 5 February 2026, the world is entering a new and potentially extremely dangerous phase of nuclear policy. The latest and most significant agreement on nuclear arms control, in force between the United States and Russia since 2011, has...
The ‘Council of Peace’ – a new chapter in world politics or an attempt to rewrite the rules of the game
On 16 January 2026, on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, US President Donald Trump officially announced the creation of a new international structure, the so-called ‘World Peace Council,’ which, according to him, should become a key instrument for conflict resolution and the restoration of affected territories....
The ‘Salt Typhoon’ of Chinese hackers
The Chinese cyber espionage operation, codenamed Salt Typhoon, which allowed Beijing to listen in on the mobile phones of high-ranking officials in Washington and London for years, was perhaps the most serious failure of Western counterintelligence. The main shock for the intelligence community was not the fact that the mobile...
Inside Alabuga: How Russia recruits women from the Global South for weapons production
In early 2026, the American think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) published a report that sheds light on a little-known aspect of the Russian military economy. It concerns the large-scale and systematic recruitment of young women from Africa, South and Central America to work in the Alabuga special...