The five different 'crisis tribes' dividing European politics

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…