DEAR READER,

We just got back from the Ukraine Recovery Conference 2026 in Gdańsk, and it's clear Ukraine is not just enduring but reorganising its economy around the war. Ukrainian businesses are rapidly adapting to support the war effort and national resilience.

We also hosted panels on information security, AI-driven communication, and watchdog journalism, highlighting Russia's accelerating hybrid operations and the targeting of journalists. Our another panel focused on Ukraine's youth and their crucial role in Europe's security. Thanks to all who contributed to these discussions, and thanks to the organisers!

Meanwhile, we have just published the latest issue of New Eastern Europe. It explores how the West should engage with Russia moving forward and more. Check it out!

Enjoy reading this week’s “brief”!

— Giorgi Beroshvili, Editor

Having read Autumn of the Patriarch by Gabriel García Márquez for my book club last month, I was struck, like probably many Russian readers, by how recognizable his fictional Latin American dictatorship looks to us today. I guess one could say, paraphrasing Leo Tolstoy, that all happy democracies are happy in their own way, but all unhappy autocracies are alike.

I will not go into detail about which paragraphs of the novel read like they have been written about Vladimir Putin’s Russia, or how striking it is to see February 23rd on one of the pages – the date that Márquez may have picked at random, but that to us is the day before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. But one important resemblance is that in the book, the ageing dictator and the entire nation are trapped in a never-ending time loop, and so is Russia it seems. And I fear that, while a ceasefire would finally bring some much-needed respite and a chance to recover for Ukraine, it may push Moscow deeper into the authoritarian consolidation cycle, if it is accompanied by a return to “business as usual” between Russia and the West.

What returns?

Speaking after this year’s scaled-back Victory Day parade, Vladimir Putin said he felt that the war with Ukraine was “coming to a close”, which many commentators took as a signal that Russia is ready to resume peace talks. Putin also suggested former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder as a possible European mediator, but both the German government and EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas have already dismissed this idea. Schröder, who is considered Putin’s friend, used to work for Russian state-owned energy companies and never explicitly condemned Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. Had his candidacy as a middleman been accepted, that would have indicated that returning to the pre-2022 status quo was an option. Kallas had forestalled this by stating back in April that “there can be no return to business as usual with Russia, even after Moscow ends this war in Ukraine.” Yet, given the state of the global economy, it is difficult not to anticipate the sliding back to at least some semblance of old foreign policy patterns, driven by financial considerations.

Following February 2022, the West did not break its economic ties with Russia as cleanly as some wanted. Yale’s Chief Executive Leadership Institute has been tracking which international companies have stayed in Russia in one form or another. There are dozens of corporations that did not withdraw but only postponed some plans or scaled back on some operations while keeping return options open. They will be able to hit the road running once the surrounding political context changes.

It is not my place to talk about the suffering of the Ukrainian people, speculate about post-war justice, or discuss what deal Ukraine or its European partners should consider acceptable. Thus, I will focus on Russians, and more specifically on the Russians who are against the war. These people will have no say in the matter but will also be impacted by the “deal”, if it takes place, in more than one way. After four long years, a resolution of the conflict, however temporary or unfair, is tempting. And in practical terms, Russians now living on both sides of the border would benefit from the possible consequences of post-war normalization, such as being able to use their bank cards when travelling, facing less scrutiny when opening bank accounts overseas, or being able to see their loved ones more often and with fewer visa restrictions in place and direct flights restored.

However, if the business-as-usual logic does win in the process, there may also be pressure on Russian political emigrants to return. After all, we remember that when the civil war in Syria had ended, several EU member states suspended the processing of Syrian asylum applications, even though that decision seemed extremely hasty. As it is, Russian activists already struggle with having their asylum claims accepted, as some immigration officials in the EU refuse to believe that even “small-scale” activism may lead to a long prison sentence in Russia or that mobilization is not actually over.

Not everyone is determined to stay an emigrant though. For instance, there exists a “By the First Flight” project, whose stated mission is to unite members of the Russian emigrant community willing to return home and “build [a] democratic Russia after the collapse of Putin’s regime”. Setting projects and slogans aside, I personally know some very dedicated human rights defenders who remained in Russia as long as they could, and intend to return to their homeland as soon as it is relatively safe for them to do so, all in order to help people on the ground. The question is how will we know it is safe to return or even just visit?

The new wave of Russian emigration triggered first by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and then by mobilization coincided with the 100th anniversary of the so-called “Philosophy Steamer” and the expulsion of the prominent members of the Russian intelligentsia by the Bolsheviks. Expelled from the country, or driven out by the revolution and the civil war, many of the “white émigrés” later returned to Soviet Russia and were crushed by its repressive apparatus. Thus, if one is to learn a single lesson from that period of Russian history, it could be: if you are far away, do not come back, until you are absolutely sure you are in no danger. Unfortunately, in the post-2022 reality, Russian citizens who are detained immediately upon crossing the border learn this lesson the hard way.

In the meantime, according to a policy paper published by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation for Freedom, none of the visa-free countries in the South Caucasus, Central Asia, or the Western Balkans are fully safe for Russian political emigrants. With the danger of extradition in Turkey; tightening residency regulations in Georgia, Kazakhstan and Montenegro; the threat of Russian political interference looming in Armenia; and Serbia trapping citizenship applicants in a legal limbo; it is difficult not to consider the EU as the only truly safe harbour in the wider region.

Continue reading in the latest issue of New Eastern Europe for free

— Nina Rozhanovskaya, International Relations expert