The Eastern Border

By Kristaps Andrejsons

A podcast about the politics and the history of the eastern Europe - including, but not limited to the current state of Russia, politics of the EU, history of the USSR and the region in general.

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The podcast currently has 756 episodes available.

Best of The Eastern Border

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Number 1: 2.55 They will hang me
CIA Director John Ratcliffe didn’t fly to Moscow to negotiate with diplomats—he flew in to hand the FSB a spreadsheet proving the Russian Empire is mathematically dead. In this broadcast, we break down the secret intelligence dossier, the Lindsey Graham sanctions ultimatum, and the systemic panic tearing through the Kremlin. While Putin rambles on television about killer whales eating polar bears and inspects Chinese cars rebadged as "Volgas," the Russian state is quietly plunging its own provinces into a total digital blackout to prepare for the upcoming post-election draft. From the bankruptcy of the Russian agricultural heartland to frontline commanders using torture to seize real estate, we map the terminal collapse of the Panopticon. And at the center of it all is a terrified Tsar who admitted the real reason he can never hit the brakes: "They will hang me." Become our patron: https://www.patreon.com/theeasternborder Merch store + another option for memberships: https://theeasternborder-shop.fourthwall.com/ Follow what's going on here in the very border of Eastern Europe: https://bsky.app/profile/theeasternborder.lv Download all episodes for free on our website; pictures accompanying certain episodes can be found there as well! http://theeasternborder.lv/ Car4Ukraine Eastern Border Autumn Harvest Campaign! https://car4ukraine.com/campaigns/autumn-harvest-2026-the-eastern-border Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/theeasternborder. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
September 01, 202642min
Number 2: 3.04 Who Pays for the War
Three hundred and fifty-five seats. Whatever that was, it certainly wasn't the end. It was just the beginning. Within days of the vote, the bill arrived. A stealth tariff pushes the cost of missed drone strikes straight onto domestic electricity bills. Kapotnya refinery goes 100% offline. The Baltic states quietly reshape their entire nuclear posture while Brussels trades oligarch sanctions for political favors. And then, the vault door cracked: leaked chats between Mikhail Babich and Dmitry Peskov reveal the inner elite acknowledging that the mutineers were right, the President is hiding in courtyards, and the war is a catastrophic disaster they can only admit in private. Meanwhile, collaborator Oleg Tsaryov panics on camera because Ukraine's legal front is locking down hundreds of billions in frozen assets. They made a desert, and now the invoice has landed on the table. Become our patron: https://www.patreon.com/theeasternborder Merch store + another option for memberships: https://theeasternborder-shop.fourthwall.com/ Follow what's going on here in the very border of Eastern Europe: https://bsky.app/profile/theeasternborder.lv Download all episodes for free on our website; pictures accompanying certain episodes can be found there as well! http://theeasternborder.lv/ Car4Ukraine Eastern Border Autumn Harvest Campaign! https://car4ukraine.com/campaigns/autumn-harvest-2026-the-eastern-border Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/theeasternborder. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
September 27, 20261h 8min
Number 3: 3.03 History of Non-Elections
Russia just held its State Duma elections. United Russia walked away with 355 of 450 seats, the largest faction in its history, on a result the Kremlin's own planners had reportedly tried to talk down to 45%. So how do you get 58%? You spend 120 years perfecting the method. ACT 1: THE ALGORITHM Bloody Sunday, the October Manifesto, and the Tsar's four Dumas. How Stolypin broke his own constitution in 1907 and invented the core trick of Russian managed democracy: you don't fear the ballot box if you control the calculator. And the Grand Duchy of Finland, where, under the same Tsar, women got the vote and a seat in parliament. ACT 2: THE RITUAL Soviet elections, told by the people who lived them. A Pioneer honor guard at the ballot box. A first-time voter in 1982 Riga waiting for a flower that never came. A PE teacher turned into "Citizen Linaberga" behind a folding table. The portable urn that drove out to your kitchen. The secret booth nobody dared to use, until 1989, when a Politburo member running unopposed lost to a pencil. And 2011's legendary 146%. ACT 3: THE TECHNOLOGY The 2026 vote itself. The electronic black box two ministries can't agree the size of. Round-number turnout "shelves." The CEC announcing "only two" stuffing cases while voiding 36,850 ballots. Observers thrown out for "walking around too much." A green apple confiscated by police. Liberal exiles and pro-war nationalists landing on the same tactic. And the Z-patriots holding a wake for the supermajority they got. Special thanks to our family members who shared their memories of Soviet-era voting in Latvia and Belarus. This episode is built on their testimony. Happy birthday, Toms! Car4Ukraine Eastern Border Autumn Harvest Campaign! https://car4ukraine.com/campaigns/autumn-harvest-2026-the-eastern-border Become our patron: https://www.patreon.com/theeasternborder Merch store + another option for memberships: https://theeasternborder-shop.fourthwall.com/ Follow what's going on here in the very border of Eastern Europe: https://bsky.app/profile/theeasternborder.lv Download all episodes for free on our website; pictures accompanying certain episodes can be found there as well! http://theeasternborder.lv/ Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/theeasternborder. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
September 21, 20262h 36min
Number 4: 3.02 Pre-Voting in a Non-Binding Pseudo-Referendum. Sort-of.
Welcome back to the Chornaya Zona. In Episode 3.02, we execute a surgical strike on the administrative rot surrounding the GosDura 2026 elections. The Russian state is currently operating on pure vranyo: running a 20% payday-loan debt spiral while pretending to maintain a 2% deficit, and manually rationing civilian fuel while police generals steal multi-billion-dollar French retail empires. We break down the terminal hypocrisy of the Russian elite starting with the Metshin brothers hiding their wealth in NATO real estate to Umar Kremlev funding Donald Trump Jr.'s Bahamian island parties. Finally, we look at the absolute absurdity of the occupied territories, where the state conducts "secret" early voting for residents whose houses no longer exist. The system doesn't need ballot boxes anymore; it simply hallucinates democracy. Become our patron: https://www.patreon.com/theeasternborder Merch store + another option for memberships: https://theeasternborder-shop.fourthwall.com/ Follow what's going on here in the very border of Eastern Europe: https://bsky.app/profile/theeasternborder.lv Download all episodes for free on our website; pictures accompanying certain episodes can be found there as well! http://theeasternborder.lv/ Car4Ukraine Eastern Border Autumn Harvest Campaign! https://car4ukraine.com/campaigns/autumn-harvest-2026-the-eastern-border Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/theeasternborder. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
September 19, 20261h 3min
Number 5: 3.01 Vranyo
The Russian state is not collapsing because of Western sanctions or NATO expansion. It is dying of a biological, bureaucratic pathogen it injected into its own bloodstream over a century ago. Welcome to the ultimate historical and modern autopsy of Vranyo and Pokazuha - the systemic lie and the aesthetic of control. In this episode, we track the disease from its origins in the Tsarist parade armies of the Crimean War, straight into the frozen mud of the Gulags where starving prisoners invented Tufta just to survive. We follow the ghost trains of the 1980s Uzbek Cotton Affair, read the declassified Politburo transcripts of the Chernobyl cover-up, and expose how the Soviet military broke its own spine in Afghanistan. Then, we drag the history into the modern slaughterhouse of 2026. From the "Credit Captures" of the Lyman OSINT trap, to the $126,000 meat grinder in the Donbas, to the Baltic Fleet painting its ships in tiger stripes to trick AI. The empire is burning its tech sector, emptying its economy, and gaslighting 140 million people just to keep the spreadsheet clean. The lie kills the liar. It always does. Become our patron: https://www.patreon.com/theeasternborder Merch store + another option for memberships: https://theeasternborder-shop.fourthwall.com/ Follow what's going on here in the very border of Eastern Europe: https://bsky.app/profile/theeasternborder.lv Download all episodes for free on our website; pictures accompanying certain episodes can be found there as well! http://theeasternborder.lv/ Car4Ukraine Eastern Border Autumn Harvest Campaign! https://car4ukraine.com/campaigns/autumn-harvest-2026-the-eastern-border Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/theeasternborder. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
September 15, 20261h 33min