Ahead of Hungary’s April 12 parliamentary elections, Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz faces its first serious polling setback in 16 years. This report follows a side story of the election. The author follows the satirical Two-Tailed Dog Party (MKKP), which combats political cynicism through humor and grassroots activism—repairing public spaces, supporting social projects, and inspiring civic engagement amid an increasingly illiberal climate.
Author: Christopher Pauliny
Medium: Kapital
Original title: V pelechu dvojchvostého psa. Reportáž o maďarskej strane, ktorej zbraňou je trápny humor
They build houses, keep them tidy, care for the sick, and keep Czech industry running. Ukrainian residents are indispensable to Czech society—but only until they grow old. Instead of enjoying their retirement, seniors face an indifferent system that lacks respect for their dignity. Yet examples from Finland and Poland show that a lifetime of work can be rewarded more fairly.
Author: Roman Berežanský
Medium: Revue Prostor
Ukrajinští penzisté a penzistky v Česku čelí obtížnému stáří
The changing texture of not only the urban soundscape but also the quietening of nature forces us to think about what will remain of the soundscape in the coming decades and what will disappear. The sounds of machines, streets, and biotopes are becoming memories that we now preserve in archives rather than experiencing in our everyday lives.
This commentary examines how the war involving the United States, Israel, and Iran indirectly affects ordinary people far from the conflict zone, particularly in South and Southeast Asia. Using the example of Nepalese households, the article highlights the region’s strong economic ties with the Persian Gulf, including energy imports and labor migration. Rising energy prices, disruptions to shipping routes, and uncertainty in the Gulf economies affect remittances sent by migrant workers and increase the cost of fuel and household energy across the region.
Autor: Krzysztof Renik
Medium: Kultura Liberalna
Original title: Jak wojnę w Iranie odczuwa zwykła rodzina w Nepalu
This opinion piece argues that Europe is often wrongly perceived as weak and indecisive in the face of Russia’s war against Ukraine. The author contends that Europe has in fact undergone significant transformation and now possesses substantial political, economic, and military leverage. The key challenge is not a lack of capacity, but a lack of strategic decisiveness. The article explores tensions between European and American approaches to security, critiques narratives coming from Moscow, Washington, and Kyiv, and calls for Europe to more assertively define and execute its own strategy in the conflict.
Author: Filip Rudnik
Medium: Kultura Liberalna
Original title: Europa ma karty w wojnie z Rosją. Czas zdecydować, jak je rozegrać
This personal essay by a Ukrainian author living in Poland explores experiences of migration, identity, and belonging in the context of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The author recounts her journey from Lviv to Warsaw, her initial hesitation about settling abroad, and the circumstances that forced her to leave Ukraine in February 2022. The text reflects on Polish-Ukrainian relations, everyday solidarity, cultural proximity, and challenges of integration. It highlights both emotional and practical aspects of displacement, including language barriers, bureaucratic hurdles, and evolving perceptions of Ukrainians in Polish society.
Author: Nataliya Parshchyk
Kultura Liberalna
Original title: Pytają mnie, czy Polacy jeszcze lubią Ukraińców. Ja tu mam drugi dom
This article examines how the war in Ukraine has reshaped the political meaning of contemporary art at the Venice Biennale. It focuses on the controversy around Russia’s planned return to the 61st Biennale despite its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the protests against that decision, and the Ukrainian project Security Guarantees, which reflects on the collapse of international security assurances such as the Budapest Memorandum. The article also discusses Open Group’s anti-war installation Repeat After Me II, presented at the Polish Pavilion in 2024, where displaced Ukrainians reproduce the sounds of war from memory. More broadly, the piece argues that art can no longer be separated from geopolitics, violence, solidarity, and questions of cultural representation in Europe.
Author: Nataliya Parshchyk
Medium: Kultura Liberalna
Original title: Gwarancje bezpieczeństwa? SSHHHHHSSSSSSSHHHSSSSH – tak leci rakieta
Culture and Identity
Alina Otzemko by the cenotaph of her husband, fot. Y. Surkova
A reported feature on how Russia’s war against Ukraine has disrupted traditional burial and mourning practices. Through cases such as empty graves (cenotaphs), destroyed cemeteries, missing bodies, improvised memorial rituals, and the emergence of “death doulas, ” the article shows how Ukrainians are creating new forms of remembrance under conditions of occupation, displacement, and mass loss. It combines personal testimony, social observation, and reflections on memory, grief, religion, and public commemoration.
Author: Yulia Surkova
Medium: Kultura Liberalna
Original title: Jak wojna zmieniła rytuały żałobne w Ukrainie
Pacifists protest, security experts warn. The reform of military service has reignited a debate that had been suppressed for decades. Germany is struggling to balance its responsibilities between the peace movement and a new wave of rearmament. This is a story about a society that must find a new attitude towards its army.
Estonia is one of the most densely forested countries in Europe. However, pressure to intensify the timber industry has also increased here in recent years. Due to large-scale logging, Estonian forests are subject to progressive degradation and are gradually producing more emissions than they can absorb. A report from Estonia examines how radical logging is changing the Estonian landscape, biodiversity and the lives of the local population.
Author: Johana Černochová
Medium: JÁDU
Original title: Jak „lesnímu národu“ mizí staré lesy před očima
Pavel Talankin is an ordinary man who had the opportunity to document the military indoctrination of elementary schools in Russia mandated by the state. A teacher whose former students went to war against Ukraine. A Russian who decided to take action and secretly smuggle his recordings into Europe. Interview with "Mr nobody against Putin".
Author: Ella Katrovasová
Medium: Jádu
Original title: Ruská opozice, propaganda a kolektivní zodpovědnost
Tourism in Albania is booming. A new airport is intended to help cope with the crowds and attract even more visitors to the country. Yet the construction project threatens, paradoxically, a unique ecosystem whose beauty attracts these very visitors. Albanian environmentalists are waging a desperate battle against their government and are hoping for support from the EU.
Author: Astrid Benölken, Tobias Zuttmann
Medium: JÁDU
Original title: Bruchlandung für die albanische Natur
Light pollution, traffic pollution, and visual pollution all exist. Recently, the issue of noise pollution has come to the fore, with a media-covered campaign against certain traditional cultural events or the venues where they take place. Or, unfortunately, took place, because they are now over.
Author: Jiří Hlinka
Medium: Revue Prostor
Original title: Česko: budoucí ostrov ticha uprostřed Evropy?
When we accept sound and hearing as the starting point for our thinking and experiencing, a new dimension of reality opens up to us, both in the analytical sense of the word and through emotional connection and imagination. In recent decades, systematic attention has been paid to sound in the field of sound studies, which deals with the history of noise and hearing, sound technologies, the contemporary soundscape, and issues of sound heritage.
Author: Anna Kvíčalová
Medium: Revue Prostor
Original title: Slyšet jinak: Tajemství zvukové krajiny
We perceive sound as something intangible and fleeting, especially today, in the age of the internet, when music and other audio content flows through streaming platforms, podcasts, digital libraries, and cloud archives. Endless hours of recordings are available with just a few clicks. But every song has a body—the device and medium that carries it—and behind it stands an industrial background, infrastructure... and an ecological footprint.
Author: Martin Mejzr
Medium: Revue Prostor
Original title: Hovězí, ropa i tropický hmyz: K materialitě moderního zvukového průmyslu
Communication through body language has existed since long time ago, but the development of sign language in Europe can only be traced back to the end of the 18th century, thanks to organized education for the deaf. Despite certain enlightened approaches, it was not at all easy to convince the hearing community of its legitimacy. However, this language did not disappear; it survived at least in deaf communities and eventually gained recognition.
Author: Lenka Okrouhlíková
Medium: Revue Prostor
Original title: Jazyk bez zvuku: český znakový jazyk
This text is a personal reflection and love letter to queer identity in contemporary Bratislava. The author connects old Danube legends of rusalkas with their journey toward nonbinary identity and family history, drawing parallels between mythical exile and minority marginalization. Through drag culture and artistic communities, it highlights the resilience of Slovak queer life and the importance of authenticity, belonging, and inner freedom.
Author: Ondřej Macl
Medium: Kapitál
Original title: Bratislavské rusalky neodišli. Milostný list kvír Slovensku
Two political utopias have recently been published in Czech. Varoufakis's The Other Now and Ursula K. Le Guin's The Dispossessed, written two generations earlier, attempt to prove that the end of capitalism is easier to imagine than the end of the world.
Author: Dalibor Levíček
Medium: Revue Prostor
Original title: Konec kapitalismu na papíře: Jiné teď, Nespoutaní a spor o to, kdo zařídí lepší budoucnost
Will There Ever Be Another You by American writer Patricia Lockwood is a 360-degree novel about long COVID: the author shows how the brain works when plagued by endless fever and what it's like when a healthy person communicates with their sick self, and reflects on what it would sound like if the Beatles wrote songs from Tolstoy's universe.
Author: Jiří Špičák
Medium: Revue Prostor
Original title: Kdyby mě vyměnili a moje rodina si toho nevšimla
The text analyzes the film The Voice of Hind Rajab, which portrays the tragic fate of a six-year-old girl during the Israeli offensive in Gaza. The film combines authentic emergency phone recordings with staged scenes from a dispatch center, highlighting structural violence and the psychological exhaustion of rescuers. The author examines the ethical limits of representing suffering. The film functions as a political appeal and a symbol of solidarity, while addressing occupation, dehumanization, and the need for independent investigation.
Author: Dominika Moravčíková
Medium: Kapitál
Original title: Prízračná hlas Hind Radžab. O hraniciach solidárneho počúvania
The text critically examines the current state of Czech cultural policy, which is adopting destructive methods known from Slovakia. The author portrays new minister as a cynical strategist who uses provocations and budget cuts to undermine artistic freedom and institutional independence. The article argues that in an era of political populism, ordinary protests are no longer sufficient. It calls for systemic criticism and solidarity to defend democratic values and prevent culture from becoming government propaganda.
Author: Apolena Rychlíková
Medium: Kapitál
Original title: Česká kulturní politika nabrala slovenskou trajektorii. Nabere ji i boj za kulturu?
Why would a young woman, with the whole world of possibilities ahead of her, put a 30-kilogram backpack on her shoulders and go sleep in the forest? Or maybe it’s not as scary as it sounds?
Author: Jana Vorontsova
Medium: NARVAMUS
Original title: «Нельзя думать, что ты не справишься»: зачем женщины идут в эстонскую армию?
Online dating increasingly looks like a space of uncertainty: ghosting, broken promises, and honesty that doesn’t pay off. But it’s not just “bad culture” — it’s a market with information asymmetry, and its paradoxes start to make sense.
Author: Anastassija Bondarenko
Medium: NARVAMUS
Original title: Рынок «лимонов» и рынок любви: как асимметрия информации формирует приложения для знакомств
Under almost every article about gender-based violence or misogyny, there’s a comment along the lines of: “we already have too much equality, and women have all the privileges.” Well then, let’s take a closer look. Is there really too much protection for women in Estonia?
Author: Jana Vorontsova
Medium: NARNAMUS
Original title: Куда бежать от партнерского насилия?
After Aleksandra Veresova (24) crossed the border, the war followed. She and around 30 percent of Ukrainian refugees have been affected by war-induced post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Now living in Denmark, Aleksandra tries to balance adapting to Danish society and dealing with trauma.
As public debate continues over the troubling demographic situation in Lithuania and across Europe, we hear comments from experts, politicians, civil society organizations, and churches. Much more rarely do we hear from the women themselves who choose not to have children; and those who cannot have children are often erased from the conversation altogether.
Author: Gražina Bielousova
Medium: NARA
Negaliu turėti, galiu neturėti: apie vaikus ir bevaikystę
In the last century, most of Lithuania’s wetlands were drained through land-reclamation projects, making the country one of the most drained in the world. The marshes themselves, through their moss, have borne witness to the ambitions of changing regimes and authorities.
Author: Martyna Šulskutė
Medium: NARA
Original title: Pelkėmis klampojanti Lietuvos istorija
The text criticizes attempts to silence and infantilize critical voices by political representatives who seek to discredit the opinions of young people by labelling them as inexperienced "children." The text defends the right of public figures to engage in political discourse and rejects the notion that sport should remain strictly apolitical. At the same time, it points to the importance of mutual solidarity in women's teams, which replaces the former ruthless rivalry and robotic pursuit of goals.
Author: Soňa Uriková
Medium: Kapitál
Original title: Nemlčať je zlato. Keď športovkyne nemajú v postojoch hokej
This is a collection of thematic podcasts exploring experiences of personal and social change. The stories, produced by students, focus on people who have reached a turning point in their lives and were forced or chose to change – changing their environment, profession, relationship with their body, or community.A
Authors: Journalism students at Vilnius University
Medium: NARA
Original title: Žmogus niekada nesustoja. Rinktiniai Vilniaus universiteto studentų garso pasakojimai
As the full-scale war continues into its fifth year, for some Ukrainian women sex is becoming the only commodity they can offer in exchange for survival. But in war, where is the line between free choice and coercion?
Authors: Sigita Vegytė, Denis Vėjas
Medium: NARA
Original title: Už išgyvenimą kare jos moka kūnais
When many men go off to war, women take over jobs that were previously dominated by men. This is how gender equality is being born in Ukrainian factories. Men used to dominate the fields of metallurgy, logistics, mining, agriculture, defense, IT, and construction. After the Russia’s full-scale invasion, these sectors began to face labor shortages. Women are stepping in to replace them.
Estonia is a country with a population smaller than that of Warsaw. How does society function on such a scale? How do Estonians build relationships and communicate on a daily basis? What was the Singing Revolution and why is it still key to understanding Estonian identity today? What is the story behind the city of Narva? Interview with Antoni Pusz, a journalist who visited Estonia as part of the Perspectives project.
Author: Antoni Pusz
Medium: Radio Kampus
Original title: Kim są Estończycy? Antoni Pusz o rewolucji śpiewającej i perspektywach kraju mniej ludnego niż Warszawa
For the whole world, Kramatorsk in eastern Ukraine has long been associated with war, shelling and the constant threat of Russian occupation. But for thousands of Ukrainian couples, this city just 15 kilometres from the front line has become a place of meeting and parting, of grief and love.
Author: Yulia Surkova
Medium: JÁDU
Original title: Краматорськ — місто побачень | Кохання на лінії фронту
The text captures the dramatic events of early 2026, when US special forces captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, sparking a wave of uncontrolled joy among migrants in Santiago, Chile. Through personal reporting, the author contrasts the contagious euphoria of Venezuelan expats with the chilling geopolitical consequences of this power intervention. The entire text thus critically examines the fine line between the desire for freedom and the acceptance of foreign military intervention.
This text analyses the gradual breakdown of the transatlantic partnership, which the author documents in the transition from Biden's diplomatic cooperation to the assertive voluntarism of the Trump administration. At the heart of the argument is a deep value conflict between Europe's emphasis on international law and America's tendency to assert its interests through brute force and national will.
The text critically reflects on excessive alcohol consumption, which has become an integral and normalized part of Christmas celebrations in Slovak and Czech society. The author points out that instead of peace, the Advent season often brings alcohol-fueled madness, which serves as an escape from loneliness, financial stress, and pressure to be perfect. The article highlights the need for greater self-awareness and mentions alternative projects that seek to create a festive space without alcohol.
Author: Apolena Rychlíková
Medium: Kapitál
Original title: Šťastné a ožralé? O normalizaci pití v čase vánočních svátků
The text deals with the issue of Slovak migration, emphasizing that the departure of young people to other EU countries. It identifies two main types of emigrants: those who leave because of labor market problems, such as unemployment, and those who seek new experiences and skills. The article presents the stories of specific Slovaks living abroad who describe their experiences with job hunting, culture shock, language barriers, and even discrimination associated with their Eastern European origins.
