Shota Hintsagty

Lublin voivodeship unanimously voted on Monday to tear up its 2004 agreement with Lviv oblast, over its resolution making 2027 a year of the UPA, behind the 1943 massacres of Poles in Volhynia. Interesting case as this is a dispute at the regional level that neither capital apparently initiated

Dear RUTA members and friends, while we prepare our own statement in support of our member Vladyslav Starodubtsev, we encourage our community to join us in signing this petition www.change.org/p/condemn-as...

Vucic has announced defeat

'Russian Orthodox dreadlocks' 🫢 Shaman sells war against Ukraine as a holy cause for Russians but Buyantueva observes how this Kremlin-curated pop icon narrows Russianness to white and Orthodox doi.org/10.1080/0966...

Holy Synod of RU Orthodox Church has formalised the practice of rebaptising the converts from the OCU, and it includes a ‘canonical inquiry’ into each convert’s online criticism and part in church ‘seizures’. Anyone who spoke out against the ROC must renounce their ‘past errors’ in writing.

After unpunished political violence, politically motivated verdicts, undemocratic elections and the harassment of media and critics, Georgian Dream’s bid to ban five opposition parties through the Constitutional Court is simply a matter of consistency.

Ukraine’s religion service has declared the administration of the Zaporizhzhia eparchy affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church, the fourth such finding. One ground is its failure to leave the Kyiv Metropolia, but the court has not yet ruled on aboshing the Metropolia... Tricky

‘Closing the Sky’, a Ukrainian documentary by Come Back Alive on how Ukraine defends its skies. Screening at Lund University. In 2022, Ukraine asked NATO to ‘close the sky’, to little avail. The film follows what Ukraine did instead to shield its cities and infrastructure from Russian strikes.

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❓ What role does religion play in Ukraine? How does Russia use its branch of Orthodoxy in Ukraine as an instrument of political influence? Find the answers in the Explaining Ukraine podcast: ukraineworld.org/en/podcasts/...

I encourage you to watch The Librarians (2025) sometime during this Banned Books Week. It's available on PBS for a small donation, but of course you can watch the trailer for free. I had the privilege of seeing it at my local theatre with my library volunteer group. 🩵 www.pbs.org/independentl...

12 persecuted clergy were interviewed, including seven priests and deacons of the UOC, not only the OCU: Five of the seven were detained and three describe beatings or electric shocks. Some link their detention to Ukrainian-language services and prayers for Ukraine.

Gårdagens val innebar en ”Mamdani:sering” av det urbana Sverige och klyftan mellan stad och land är nu större än någonsin tidigare tobiashubinette.wordpress.com/2026/09/14/g... Även om SD backade så är ”SD-land” geografiskt sett nu större än tidigare medan de rödgröna dominerar helt i storstäderna

New BGNES (Bulgarian agency) documentary on the repackaged Greater Serbia, with the Serbian Orthodox Church as its most convenient instrument: it already has structures "everywhere Serbs live," so it does the political work in places where Belgrade cannot and doesn't need to act as a state

Kosovo guarantees religious freedom in its constitution but withholds the legal tools that would make it usable

New video! It feels like the "male gaze" has finally reached mainstream recognition as a bad movie trope. Now, women are sharing their own stories, and men are... well, what are we doing? What does male desire look like in this new era? Can we still gaze? youtu.be/An5WXkDqBfU

A nuanced look at state-religious minority dynamics: Hui mosques and burial grounds in China persist in a grey zone of missing titles and unenforced planning rules. Tolerance as non-enforcement. Peter Ho on Religion in Praxis: open.spotify.com/episode/4EfhSyLmSSBYBeW4VIukKK

My colleagues have produced a report on transnational far-right activism. A different sort of diaspora diplomacy to the one I teach on #GI7100

In a new OCMediaorg article, RUTA member Tatev Hovhannisyan explores how anti-gender rhetoric, "foreign agent" laws, and Russian imperial influence are reshaping feminist activism in Sakartvelo. Amid growing repression, feminist networks continue to build solidarity. oc-media.org/a-soviet-sty...

A memorable day in June at the Trakai Orthodox Church of the Nativity and the Karaim kenesa. I hope to be back soon in Lithuania

I talked with Dr. Dan DeHanas to examine the spiritual architecture of contemporary populism. Dan argues that what we are witnessing in 2024 and 2025 is not simply politics dressed up in religious language - it is something qualitatively different open.spotify.com/episode/2GZc...

Disaffiliation isn't just secularisation, it's also people walking away from a brand they don't want to be associated with? From 42-3 min

Came across this in a Warsaw doorway: a plaque with the visual grammar of fiscal transparency, minus the recipient :) The actual transparency on Fundacja Inicjatyw Młodzieżowych, a PiS-aligned, typical patronage NGO, came from Onet, OKO.press, and Frontstory, not by the state that funded it.

This aged well without even aging much onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10....

It's not just that Orbán losing inspires hope in other competitive-autocratic countries ruled by right-wing nationalist authoritarians. It's that his loss materially changes things in those other countries, because he's been operating as a headquarters and funding source...

Talk Eastern Europe, the Podcast of @neweasterneurope.eu, recently lost a major funding source. If you can, I highly suggest taking out a subscription. With it, you can listen to in depth interviews with experts on the post-Soviet sphere! www.patreon.com/talkeasterne...

DC Friends! Please join me to launch my new book, The Queer Face of War: Portraits and Stories from Ukraine at Politics and Prose's Wharf location. I'll be in conversation with the extraordinary @chrisgeidner.bsky.social discussing homophobia and the global assault on democracy.