@minczifra.bsky.social
Political & security analyst. 🇪🇺🇭🇺🇺🇸. FPRI Eurasia fellow, Delphi GRC fellow. Bear Market Brief contributor. Ex-CEPA, ESI. Posts about 🇷🇺, 🇪🇺, illiberalism & its limits. My own views. Здесь вам не Toth. www.noyardstick.com minczifra.substack.com
YES. DO IT!
www.nbcnewyork.com/new-york-cit...
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He didn't exactly threaten to use force. He said "political and financial tools", and added that he didn't have military force in mind
In every possible way he has vilified a people under attack & built a despicable campaign against a nonexistent threat. But he didn't threaten to use military force
Tbf Mr. Poopybutthole has always sounded more like Lindsey Graham or John Kennedy to me.
06.03.2026 21:06 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
1956: Hungary's communist leaders phone Moscow for help
2026: Hungary's postcommunist leaders phone Moscow for help
Congrats - well deserved
05.03.2026 23:31 — 👍 4 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0Not everyone will be receptive to complete falsehoods. This is something that even real news sites have reported. I doubt that this issue is very important to most voters, but still, Magyar felt like he had to react to it. It was a completely unnecessary move from Zelenskyy.
05.03.2026 23:30 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0Happy Free Borscht Day for everyone observing!
05.03.2026 22:20 — 👍 7 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
💥SCOOP: Putin tasked Sergei Kiriyenko to run a Moldova-style election meddling operation in Hungary for Orbán, sending three GRU-linked political technologists with diplomatic or service passports to operate from the Russian Embassy in Budapest. More in my newsletter: vsquare.org/goulash-krem...
05.03.2026 21:28 — 👍 217 🔁 152 💬 3 📌 12If this ever gets to Shoigu, that will be a watershed moment. Shoigu's career predates Putin's presidency and he has built a personal rapport with the president. He has been ready to be sidelined whenever Putin said so & didn't expend vast resources to protect his former allies over the past years.
05.03.2026 21:49 — 👍 5 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
A good thread on what looks like a quite remarkable development.
A potential out for Tsalikov would have been getting appointed Federation Council member from Tuva, Shoigu's home region but remarkably, this didn't come to pass and not for the lack of trying.
botox ejection
apnews.com/article/trum...
This is a bafflingly ill-advised move from Zelenskyy. It's one thing to be rightfully frustrated, it's another to issue such threats.
He may just have given Orban a much-needed popularity boost by behaving exactly as Fidesz's propaganda said he would.
kyivindependent.com/zelensky-thr...
Talking to NeMoskva, economist Vyacheslav Shiryaev talks about the coming crisis of regional budgets: mini-crises of payments, cutting corruption rent and efficiency declining further.
This is what I also warned of in this article for Riddle: ridl.io/state-of-unr...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=htDx...
Right-wing govts had leaned into this idea of ethnic unity across borders very heavily even before Orban made it possible for them to claim Hungarian citizenship in a simplified way. Orban goes to Romania every year to lay out his strategic vision. So from that point of view, this doesn't stand out.
03.03.2026 19:01 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0This being said, ethnicity/nationality in this area of Europe are fluid concepts. In Hungarian public consciousness, the Hungarian state has a duty to care for Hungarians living in what once was the territory of the Kingdom of Hungary, regardless of citizenship. They're also heavily romanticized.
03.03.2026 19:01 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0The implication I think is that this is mostly about ethnicity. The context is: Fidesz is well behind in the polls six weeks before an election; the main campaign message is: Ukrainians hate you, they want you to die in a war and if the opposition wins, you will". Hence the urge to show they care.
03.03.2026 19:00 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
The Reuters report is factual in the sense that both of these men appear to be ethnic Hungarians. The HU FM claimed one of them had HU citizenship. From earlier press reports it looks like the other one didn't (here in pro-Orban Mandiner) but had mental health issues.
mandiner.hu/kulfold/2026...
Fwiw, based on Szijjarto's words, one of them had dual citizenship, he says the other one had "Hungarian nationality" (in the European sense, so this doesn't imply citizenship).
He also called mobilization "an open season on people" so many times in a 1-minute video that I'm developing an aneurysm.
Right-wing Hungarian governments have always regarded themselves as protectors of Hungarians in the neighboring countries who also have voting rights.
This being said, this obviously is all part of Orban's pre-election anti-Ukrainian hysteria, along with the military checkups and the "open letter"
Evolution of Viktor Orbán's government propaganda:
2017: “Let’s not let Soros have the last laugh!”
2026: “Let’s not let Zelensky have the last laugh!”
By the way, can anyone guess the common feature that makes both such convenient scapegoats for a far-right government?
Put Iran on the blockchain
by Andrew Yang
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The report also mentions that regions (including Moscow) spent about one trillion rubles from their reserves in 2025 to cover expenditures. At the end of August, their reserves amounted to 3.3 trillion rubles, but 41% of this mount was held by Moscow.
bujet.ru/article/5110...
After almost a decade of decrease, driven by federal credit policy, the amount of more expensive bank loans in regional debt also started growing in 2024, and last year it tripled. More than 50% of the debt of 13 regions, including ones struggling with expenditures, now consists of market loans.
27.02.2026 22:18 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Expert RA's analysis of the same data also lists regional debt growth - you can see that the debt burden of many the regions facing a sudden, large income drop, increased substantially in 2025, and not only in wealthier regions that are able to finance this debt.
raexpert.ru/researches/r...
Total* nonconsolidated regional expenditures: 9.1% ⬆️
Total own revenues: 4% ⬆️ (more than 10% ⬇️ in several oil regions, Kemerovo (coal), Vologda (steel))
Social policy expenditures: 19.4% ⬆️
Corporate income tax revenues: 8.8% ⬇️ (more than 20% ⬇️ in 17 regions)
*w/o occupied territories
Updated map chart based on the latest granular Treasury data for 2025.
27.02.2026 18:19 — 👍 2 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0
Updated map chart based on the latest granular Treasury data for 2025.
27.02.2026 18:19 — 👍 2 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0
Kommersant reviews AKRA's analysis, based on (likely more recently reviewed) Treasury data. The situation is basically the same as I described, with slightly different percentages - in the regions with the highest deficit, the numbers are even worse than in my count.
www.kommersant.ru/doc/8462688