The rise of geopolitics as a new political faultline in Central and Eastern Europe

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has not only redrawn the geopolitical map of Europe, it has also penetrated deep into the domestic politics of EU member states, most especially its Central and Eastern European members. Across the region, political parties are now divided – and more often than not willingly sort themselves – into opposing pro-EU and pro-Russia camps, subverting the well-established left–right cleavage that has organized politics since the fall of communism.¹ In this new divide, security concerns converge with a culture war, resulting in unprecedented levels of political polarization within societies that are already experiencing heightened domestic tensions due to the rise of right-wing populists.

This new phase started in Slovakia, when in September 2023 Robert Fico and his party won the parliamentary elections and formed a coalition on the promise of stopping both financial and military aid to Ukraine while limiting sanctions against Russia. Once in power, the new government went further and quickly filed a legal complaint against former Prime Minister Eduard Heger and his defence minister for having transferred the country’s entire fleet of MIG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine in 2023, accusing them of betrayal and of having compromised national security.² Far from receding, tensions were reignited a few months later, with an assassination attempt on Fico in May 2024. The perpetrator, who was later found guilty, declared that Fico’s decision to suspend military aid to Ukraine was his prime motivation.³

Late in 2024, geopolitics erupted spectacularly in Romanian politics. On 6 December 2024, the country’s Constitutional Court annulled the first round of a presidential election after the far-right, and previously unknown, candidate Caelin Georgescu took an unexpected lead. The judges’ ruling, an unprecedented decision in an EU member state, was made because Georgescu had benefited from Russian electoral interference, especially via TikTok. With this decision, the stakes of the political debate rose and became the arena for a civilizational clash: Georgescu was banned and his designated heir, George Simion, campaigned on a fiercely anti-elite and anti-Ukrainian platform against the pro-EU opposition, consisting of virtually every other political party. It was a replay of ‘anti-system’ versus ‘status quo’, but amid considerably heightened tensions precipitated by the Court’s decision. For the traditional parties, it was a matter of saving Romanian democracy from a foreign threat emanating from Moscow. Ironically, for Simion it was also a fight to save Romanian democracy – a cause that Elon Musk and US Vice President JD Vance were to rally behind. Each camp was convinced that only they would save Romania.

In the latest legislative elections in Czechia, polarization did not quite reach the same level but geopolitics weighed heavily on the political competition. Strikingly, the incumbent prime minister, Petr Fiala, attempted to frame the elections as a struggle between EU (his coalition) supporters and the pro-Russian (anti-EU) opposition. While his main opponent and the ultimate winner, Andrej Babis, qualifies as a radical-right populist, he could hardly be described as simply being pro-Russian, as he campaigned almost exclusively on domestic issues. Other populist parties were nevertheless all too happy to play the geopolitical card suggested by the outgoing prime minister. After winning the elections, the new president of the parliament, Tomio Okamura from the right-wing populist Freedom and Direct Democracy Party, proudly removed the Ukrainian flag from the Czech parliament. The next day, in a show of defiance, opposition parties hung eight more on the façade of the building.⁴

The shadow of far-right populism

These episodes raise questions. Is the label ‘pro-Russian’ one that politicians and their parties claim for themselves, or is it imposed by their opponents? They rarely voice explicit support and admiration for Vladimir Putin or Russia. Usually, their pronouncements take the form of an anti-Ukrainian discourse, which can be indirect – targeting aid to Ukraine – or direct, with hostility towards Ukrainians themselves. For example, the Hungarian government launched an openly Ukrainophobic campaign at the beginning of 2025, which never explicitly praises Russia but recycles Kremlin propaganda. Little digging is required to uncover genuine pro-Russian statements in the pro-Fidesz press or made by close associates of Viktor Orbán. Mária Schmidt, the quasi-official historian of the regime, published a piece in which she denounces the massacre of Bucha as having been staged by the Ukrainians themselves.⁵

Can the rise of pro-Russian rhetoric be ascribed to the rise of far-right populism observed throughout Central and Eastern Europe? Although there is a strong correlation with the far right, radical-left movements also capitalize on pro-Russian sympathies. In Czechia, this was visible with the unexpected rise of Stacilo, an openly pro-Russian party that attracts former social democrats and communists. It received 4.3% of the vote and failed to win seats in parliament, a fate that mirrors that of Sarah Wagenknecht’s party in Germany, but these examples demonstrate the potential success of a radical-left version of Euroscepticism and pro-Russian sympathies.

Far-right populists do not hold a monopoly on the ‘pro-Russian’ agenda, and, importantly, they are not necessarily pro-Russian – in fact in Western Europe most far-right parties are either neutral or openly anti-Moscow.⁶ However, in general the most influential pro-Russian parties are far-right or radical-right populists. This correlation is essential: voters do not support parties because of their alleged sympathies with Moscow, but because of their right-wing populist ideology and broad political agenda. Populism is a better explanation for why millions of citizens are drawn to parties expressing pro-Russian sympathies, even though their national history and collective memory might suggest otherwise.

Hungary is a good example. The main reason why Fidesz voters can be sympathetic towards Putin is not because of some sort of historical determinism but because they adhere to a far-right interpretation of world politics, in which Vladimir Putin is the challenger of the decadent European Union elites and the flag carrier of their civilizational values. The pro-Russian stance is the consequence of a radical-right positioning.⁷

Even in Poland, where the memory of Russian oppression is among the most vivid, the EU-sceptic and populist Law and Justice (PiS) party moderated its support for Ukraine during the legislative elections of 2023 as it came under increasing pressure from extreme far-right parties. Among them was Konfederacja’s candidate Sławomir Mentzen, who received around 15% of the vote in the first round of the 2024 presidential elections, whereas Grzegorz Braun, who is an open admirer of Vladimir Putin, scored 6%. The final winner, the nationalist Karol Nawrocki, still supports Ukraine, but under the pressure from both his party (PiS) and the far right, he remains much more ambiguous than his predecessor.⁸

Securitization fuels polarization

If the current political and social polarization is a cultural clash prompted by the rise of the radical right, what is genuinely geopolitical about this divide, aside from the event that prompted it in the first place? Genuine security concerns are currently at play. The risks EU member states run by providing close support to Ukraine – the debate on ‘escalation’ – are a legitimate concern. Without even thinking of an open confrontation with Russia, the security landscape has already profoundly shifted, with most of the EU member states having decided to increase military spending in the face of Moscow’s aggression and the hybrid warfare waged against Europe.

While this naturally warrants a democratic debate, geopolitical reality is driving a securitization of politics that in turn is further fuelling polarization. Scholars of securitization theory have long explored the process through which actors ‘securitize’ certain issues, namely when an issue is removed from ‘normal’ politics through claims of it being an existential threat.⁹ In these circumstances, the reality of the security threat matters little. In Hungary, Viktor Orbán has made baseless allegations against his rival Péter Magyar of being manipulated by Ukraine and of plotting a coup to install a ‘pro-war’ government in Budapest. The former chief of staff of the Hungarian army, Romulusz Ruszin-Szendi, has become another main target of these accusations. He is featured on every propaganda poster alongside Péter Magyar, Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Ursula von der Leyen, to illustrate the alleged EU-Ukraine plot to topple the government and draw Hungary into the war. This follows years of intense propaganda that depicts migration as an existential threat for a country that has never been a large destination for migrants.

However, even in the presence of an objective security threat, its reality can easily be contested. In Romania, security concerns prompted its constitutional judges to annul the results of the election and ban the candidate Călin Georgescu from running again,¹⁰ but the evidence was difficult to disclose to the public. The Constitutional Court’s decision was based on a four-page summary document declassified two days earlier by the authorities, leaving the public and Romanian voters completely disoriented. The lack of evidence, or the difficulty in publishing and making sense of it, gave both sides the opportunity to instrumentalize it: pro-Russian parties deny the reality of Russian interference and denounce what they see as censorship and democratic backsliding. Pro-EU parties might potentially exploit the reference to Russian interference to discredit their opponents and paint them as a security threat. The result is an ever more heated and polarized political landscape.

Debating geopolitics, not Europeanness

The danger therefore stems not from the democratic debate on the geopolitical situation, or fundamental questions such as the right level of military expenditure in the face of US pressure, but from the securitization of this question. The debate merges geopolitics and security with questions of national identity and Europeanness. The recently released National Security Strategy of the US alleges the civilizational decay of the European continent and is the latest evidence of how easily these issues can be conflated. Ultimately, instead of debating economic and social questions that relate to the life of the average voter, politicians increasingly resort to accusations of who is acting in the national interest and who is committing treason.

For any side interested in promoting the EU’s strategic autonomy, the lesson is that blind faith in the universal adherence to ‘European’ ideals can only lead to disappointment, and for the EU to become a strategic geopolitical actor it must not lose sight of the traditional realm of politics. The Russian aggression against Ukraine and the hybrid war it is waging against the EU did produce a ‘rally around the flag’ effect. But as researcher Liesbet Hooghe and her team found, this ‘consolidation ... has perhaps overshadowed, but not overridden, prior domestic conflicts’.¹¹ If a newcomer to politics like Georgescu managed such a high score while praising Putin, a politician notoriously unpopular in Romania, it is not because so many Romanians suddenly discovered their love for Russia, but because Georgescu presented himself as the problem solver for voters who feel left behind and forgotten by the elite.¹²

The pitfalls of rallying to the pro-EU cause are most evident in two small countries seeking EU accession: Moldova and Georgia. For the latter, certainly after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, it might have seemed obvious that Georgians would naturally embrace parties advocating for EU membership, and universally stand against Russia, which already occupies about a fifth of its territory. And yet, the exact opposite happened, with a ruling party now openly defying Brussels and not concealing its sympathies with Moscow. This pro-Russian government was re-elected despite fraud and repression, but also with popular support.

The Georgian lesson prompted EU leaders to take a more proactive approach with Moldova. After July’s visit by Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, the triumvirate of France’s President Emmanuel Macron, Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz jointly visited Chișinău in September 2025, in an obvious attempt to secure Maia Sandu’s victory against an arguably pro-Russian opponent. A clear strategic move on the part of the European leaders, it was not without risk, and one the EU might need to handle carefully. Forcing an excessively geopoliticized vision of politics onto candidate countries and at home may supercharge an anti-EU backlash with a geopolitical twist. The EU has no shortage of backlashes to contend with already.