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- 📩 What we're watching in 2025
📩 What we're watching in 2025
Plus: A small gift
Giorgi Beroshvili
December 30, 2024
DEAR READER,
As we wrap up 2024, the year of elections, wars, AI, you name it, there's one theme that has stood out for me: political bias. Recently, I came across a video by Derek Muller titled "On these questions, smarter people do worse". It is about how our IQ and numeracy skills, not just raw math knowledge, but our ability to interpret and work with numbers, affect how we perceive politically charged topics.
Derek conducted an experiment: participants were given the exact same dataset framed in two ways — one being a neutral topic (skin cream effectiveness) and other tied to a polarizing issue (gun control). As you might have expected, when the data was associated with a politically neutral topic, participants with strong numeracy skills analyzed it accurately. But when the same data was reframed around a divisive topic, biases took over. Instead of interpreting the numbers objectively, participants fall back on their preexisting beliefs, questioning the sources, even justifying their views despite the numbers that were in front of them. Now, imagine this experiment in the context of our region's challenges, such as supporting Ukraine, ramping up defense, tackling migration or EU expansion. Would numbers guide us? I hope that 2025 brings a bigger shift towards facts over biases.
With this in mind, let's segue to our final newsletter of 2024. This is a special edition — instead of bringing you the expert opinion, we are turning to you, our OG experts. We saw Outrageous Predictions 2025 by Saxo, and Morning Brew has been doing this for a while too. So we decided to have our own Central and Eastern European region predictions. So share your hot take in the poll below, and we will revisit them next year to see how your predictions stack up. Plus, we have got a little something for you — a 20% discount code at the end.
Lastly, a quick celebration: Talk Eastern Europe has hit 60 patrons! We would like to thank our listeners for your incredible support! Don't forget to tune in to our latest episode below.
Enjoy reading this week’s “brief”!
— Giorgi Beroshvili, Editor
Ep. 206: Poland prepares to take over the EU presidency. Guest: Tomasz Zając
TOP STORIES OF THE WEEK
🇦🇿 Azerbaijani plane shot down by Russia over Grozny. Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev has demanded Russia take responsibility for the December 25 crash of Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243, which killed 38 people. The Embraer 190 jet, en route to Grozny with 67 onboard, suffered tail damage caused by a surface-to-air missile in Russian airspace, and had to return to Aktau, Kazakhstan, where it ultimately crashed. Aliyev dismissed Russia’s initial claim of a bird strike and demanded compensation for Azerbaijan and affected families. 2024 has been a bad year for aviation, including the Jeju Air Flight 2216 crash in South Korea, which resulted in 179 deaths, and a DHL cargo plane crash in Lithuania in November that killed one person.
🇸🇰 Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico made a surprise visit to Moscow. He held talks with President Putin, and became the third Western leader (after Orban and Karl Nehammer of Austria) to meet him since Russia's invasion of Ukraine. During his visit, Fico discussed Russian gas supplies to Slovakia, which relies on energy transit through Ukraine. Since Ukraine has warned that it would not renew the deal with Russia, Fico has argued that it would hurt Slovakia. The visit has been criticised by Ukraine and the Czech Republic, and protests took place in Bratislava.
🇫🇮 / 🇪🇪 The Estlink 2 power cable, linking Finland and Estonia, was damaged in the Baltic sea. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock described the sabotage of the undersea power cable as a “wake-up call” and called for new European sanctions against Russia's “shadow fleet”. Previously, two data cables, the Arelion cable between Sweden and Lithuania and the C-Lion 1 cable between Finland and Germany, were also damaged in November. In turn, NATO has pledged to enhance its efforts in the region to counter these threats.
🇷🇺 Russian President Vladimir Putin rejects Trump's peace proposal on Ukraine. According to the reports, Trump's team suggested delaying Ukraine’s NATO membership for 10 to 20 years as a condition for ending the war in Ukraine. Lavrov also rejected Trump's peace plan, especially the proposal for European peacekeepers. Putin insists on ending the conflict in 2025 without territorial concessions.
🇭🇷 Croatia’s President Zoran Milanović led the first round of voting but faces a runoff. Milanović received 49% of the vote, while Dragan Primorac, a candidate of the ruling conservative HDZ party, trailed with 19%. Milanović is a critic of Western military support for Ukraine. He has stated that the race is not over and urged his supporters to stay grounded ahead of the January 12 runoff.
EXPERT POLL
Predictions for 2025
So, here it is — Brief Eastern Europe’s 2025 prediction poll! Do you think Ukraine and Russia will sign a ceasefire deal? Will Orbán encounter challenges in Hungary? Will CEE see a Eurovision winner? Take a guess by clicking the button below! Once filling out the form, enjoy a 20% discount on all New Eastern Europe products, including back issues and subscriptions.
We will revisit these predictions next year to see how they turned out!
— Giorgi Beroshvili, Editor
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