This edited volume focuses on the effects that Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine had on Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). It includes chapters covering fourteen countries situated in different corners of the broader region. Individual contributions shed light on how these CEE countries positioned themselves vis-à-vis the war and (re)defined their own regional identities and geopolitical belonging. The chapters offer a rich survey of the local discourses and perspectives, grasping the region in its persisting complexity and diversity.

Aliaksei Kazharski received his Ph.D. from Comenius University in Bratislava in 2015. He has worked at Charles University in Prague and has been a guest researcher at the universities of Oslo, Tartu, Vienna, Malmö, and Uppsala, the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna (IWM), and the Polish Academy of Sciences. He published two monographs: Eurasian Integration and the Russian World. Regionalism as an Identitary Enterprise (CEUPress 2019) and Central Europe Thirty Years after the Fall of Communism. A Return to the Margin? 2022, winner of the International Studies Association, Global International Relations Section 2022-2023 Book Award).Andrey Makarychev is Professor of Regional Political Studies at the University of Tartu Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies. He is the author ofPopular Biopolitics and Populism at Europe’s Eastern Margins (2022), and co-authored five monographs: Celebrating Borderlands in a Wider Europe: Nations and Identities in Ukraine, Georgia and Estonia (2016), Lotman's Cultural Semiotics and the Political (2017), Critical Biopolitics of the Post-Soviet: from Populations to Nations (2020), Practical Biopolitics of COVID-19: Comparing Russian and Indonesian Experiences (2023) and Biopower in Putin’s Russia: From Taking Care to Taking Lives (CEU Press, 2024).

Aliaksei Kazharski, Andrey Makarychev. Introduction: Kidnapping Europe in the Twenty-first Century
1. Katsiaryna Lozka. Belarus after 2022: The Logic of War and the Limits of Liminality
2. Nik Hynek, Václav Moravec. Continuous Czech Geopolitical Vacillation: A New Perspective
3. Andrey Makarychev. Estonia: Back to Eastern Europe?
4. Adam Bence Balazs. Hungary’s Politics of Weakness: The Nuisance Potential and the Limits of a (Geo) Political Countermodel in the EU and NATO in Times of War
4. Evija Djatkovica. Between European, Northern, Eastern and the Baltic Understanding of the Self: The Case of Latvia
5. Zilvinas Svedkauskas. Lithuania’s Turn to Democracy Promotion: Redefining Fundamental Interests in the Face of Authoritarian Onslaught
6. Aleksandar Sazdovski. Between a Rock and a Hard Place. Macedonian Geopolitical Considerations between Pan-Slavic Euroscepticism and European Integration
7. Dorina Baltag. EU Security Community in Moldova: The Tug-of-War Between East and West
8. Aliaksei Kazharski. The Jagiellonian Moment and Beyond: Identities and Geopolitics in Poland after 2022
9. Marko Kovacevic, Milos Vukelic. Waiting for the Order to Change: How the Russo-Ukrainian War Affected the Mixture of Serbian Geopolitical Traditions
10. Danijela Canji. Slovakia’s post-2022 Ontological liminality in the context of the Russo-Ukrainian War: Moving toward permanent liminality?
11. Alicja Curanovic. How Slovenians became Zahodnjaki: Slovenia's Changing Notions of Central Europeanness Following Russia's Full-scale Invasion of Ukraine
12. Lacin Idil Oztig, Asli Ege. Türkiye and the 2022 Russo-Ukrainian War: Civilizational Identity and the “Hero” Character
13. Yuliia Kurnyshova. Away from the East: Ukraine’s Politics of Belonging During the War
Laure Delcour. Conclusions. Redefining Imaginaries in the Wake of Russia's War in Ukraine: Shifting Identities and Narratives in Europe
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