Armands Astukevičs

Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine has laid bare Moscow’s neo-imperial ambitions and the direct threat it poses to its so-called near-abroad. For NATO frontline states such as Latvia, the security landscape has fundamentally changed over the past three years. While Russian forces are currently taking staggering losses in Ukraine, necessitating a period of force reconstitution, […]

Armands Astukevičs, Researcher at the Centre for East European policy studies The invasion of Kursk region by Ukrainian forces caught analysts in the West and the Russian elite off-guard. After Ukraine’s unsuccessful counter-offensive last summer and the prolonged difficult situation on the front, the Kursk operation marked a major breakthrough and a stopping point in […]

Armands Astukevičs, Researcher at the Centre for East European policy studies The Centre for East European Policy Studies continues to analyse current trends in Belarus, information activities, their impact and disinformation campaigns in which the regime of dictator Alexander Lukashenko continues to actively target its neighbours in the West. Distortion of facts and events regularly serves […]

Armands Astukevičs, Researcher at the Centre for East European policy studies Belarus continues to actively target its Western neighbours through informational influence and disinformation campaigns. While the classic theme is the hybrid migration operation on the Belarus’s border with EU member states, in recent months the military threat dimension has been increasingly emphasised in Belarus’s false […]

Authors – CEEPS researchers: Armands Astukevičs, Mārcis Balodis Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent quote about Latvia’s ugly attitude towards its Russian-speaking population gained wide resonance in social media, and some social media users treated it almost as a war threat. This is a moment of truth when we can look back at the rhetoric of Russian […]

Alexander Lukashenko and Vladimir Putin (Source: Press Service of the President of the Republic of Belarus) Text PDF: Deportations of Ukrainian children Authors: Juris Jurāns, Armands Astukevičs In a significant development that gained widespread attention in March of this year, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, the […]