Thursday 24 February 2022 will have been etched into history. After Russian aggression against Ukraine, all reasonable people quickly came to the conclusion that Russia is not a partner for us, not only in energy sector cooperation but in any other areas as well. Eight months from the outbreak of war, the time has come…

“For many years my country was a leader in reforms and getting closer to the West. Now it is trailing behind," says Giorgi Badridze, former ambassador to Turkey and the UK, in an interview with Wojciech Wojtasiewicz.

The prevailing conviction in the West was that President Volodymyr Zelensky would be unable to manage the situation, and the world’s political establishment believed that he should be evacuated as soon as possible. Later, American support emerged, even greater than expected, says Paweł Kowal in an interview by Małgorzata Nocuń.

The current trends in Western Europe show that civic participation plays an integral part of policy-making. It is an important part of the democratic process, says Kristína Bolemanová, an expert in European and foreign policy.

Until recently, ‘Ukrainians’ were synonymous with ‘cleaners’ or ‘builders’. If such a belief is held by the Czechs, it is not surprising that countries located further west know even less about Ukraine, says Alexander Dobroyer, Ukrainian sociologist, coach and researcher.

Every crisis is a lesson. The lesson here is that you should not loosen monetary policy too much. The question is how to do it without harming the actual economy – says Professor Elżbieta Mączyńska in an interview with Jakub Dymek.

What is the role of the state, what is the role of society? Zuzanna Krzątała works as Project Coordinator at Humanity in Action Poland where she leads an educational mentorship program for young activists from Poland, Ukraine, Germany and the US. Aspen Leadership Awardee 2022 Zuzanna Krzątała talks about active citizenship, politics, young leaders' approach…

I felt it was my calling – to do something good in this world. But I try not to work alone and not to be irreplaceable. I try to share both responsibility and success, says one of the founders of the patient participation department of the Czech Ministry of Health and one of the two…

What are the cities of the future? We urgently need to rethink our cities by designing urban spaces that are healthy for all of its inhabitants. All of them, not just humans, says Alexandra Střelcová, concerning a Prague-based initiative that promotes plant research, in her report after her participation in CityLab 2022.

The current situation in Ukraine, the labor market, education and young leaders is reloading the principles of CE. You can read this, and much more, in the newest articles in the annual issue of Aspen Review called Central Europe Reloaded.

A global pandemic, the war in Ukraine, or rising inflation across Europe. More than ever, the crises of recent years have shown once again how important the role of a free media is in any healthy democratic society. At the same time, we often have to fight long-term battles to preserve their independence, commented on…

We know nothing about the people who came here due to the war in Ukraine, and that is a big mistake, says an economist Daniel Münich in an interview with Robert Schuster. He thinks that one of the biggest problems is that many young Ukrainians linger in an “educational vacuum”.

The Czech labor market will have transformed radically by 2030, some jobs will disappear entirely and approximately 330,000 people will lose their jobs, Jiří Švejcar says in an interview with Robert Schuster.

Journalists now are expected to protect themselves while fighting against oppressive and illiberal governments, politicians, and disinformation, says Alexa Wandersee, an American journalist based in Prague.

To understand the current propaganda in Russia, which is a mix of historic amnesia and hypermnesia, revisionism and censorship, it is necessary to go back to World War II and the myth of the Soviet victory against Nazism, says Raimondo Lanza, analyst specialised on Russia and the Post-Soviet Space.

Should we build artificial intelligence just because we can? The technological race has become a strategic battlefield in the geopolitical war over global hegemony, says Zuzanna Lewandowska, social entrepreneur, NGO executive and co-founder of initiatives around education and ethical leadership in Poland.

Children are losing contact with their own emotions, experiences, even opinions. They are so overwhelmed with content - photos, videos, posts - that they do not even possess the mental capacity to process their own lives. The mental health crisis tied with the online space will not be solved by technological know-how. The main focus…

It is particularly hard to feel optimistic about the season ahead of us. All indicators say it is going to be difficult, and that it will severely affect people’s lives and businesses alike. What are the steps that governments of european countries will take in the following days?