What if the only limit Hungary's PM Viktor Orban has after the election is his own imagination? Orban's far-right populist Fidesz just clearly won the election that took place on March 3rd. The Prime Minister's party will have a constitutional majority in the next Hungarian parliament. Fidesz won 135 mandates in the parliament that has 199 seats. The united opposition lost badly, they only have 56 seats and 7 seats go to the extremist Our Homeland movement. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) said that Hungary’s parliamentary elections were well-run but the electoral process was marred by the absence of a level playing field. And what does Hungarian political scientist from The Centre for Social Sciences Zoltán Gábor Szűcs think about the election? "Knowing what we know now, the united opposition did not have a real chance to win," he said to me. We also discussed the legitimacy of Orban's victory and if the Hungarian Prime Minister is a friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Listen to our conversation.

Does war in Ukraine make Russian President Vladimir Putin nervous? "If there is anything human in him, he should be nervous." This is how a Senior Policy Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations Kadri Liik answered my question. We talked about why she thinks that this war looks like Putin's crusade, about the peace negotiations, and the role of Roman Abramovich, and if she is surprised by the performance of Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky and Ukraine's armed forces. Listen to our conversation.

"We have to be extremely careful making preliminary judgments about what is really happening on the ground." This is what Franz-Stefan Gady said to me when I asked him if Russia gets anything militarily right when attacking Ukraine and how Ukrainian forces are doing. My guest is a Research Fellow for Cyber, Space and Future Conflict at The International Institute for Strategic Studies. What is his cautious forecast of the conflict? This podcast was recorded on March 21st. Listen to our conversation.

Christopher Chivvis is a Senior Fellow and Director of the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment. He most recently served as the U.S. national intelligence officer for Europe. "The course of the war is notoriously difficult to predict," he said to me when I asked him about what we could expect in regards to the Russian invasion against Ukraine. But we have tried to talk a bit about possible scenarios and also about some military analogies. This podcast was recorded on March 14th. Listen to our conversation.

How many people are arriving? What is their motivation? And could it help Ukraine which is under Russia's attack? All of these questions are related to the establishment of the International Legion of Territorial Defense. Trying to find the answers, I talked to Kacper Kerawek. He is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Research on Extremism (C-REX) at the University of Oslo. His book Brown-Red Cocktail? Extremist Foreign Fighters in the War in Ukraine will be published soon. We also talked about how the Foreign Legion could work, about some historical parallels, but also about the somewhat inevitable topic of the Azov Movement. Listen to our conversation.

Maria Avdeeva is a Research Director at the European Expert Association where she focuses on international security, cooperation of Ukraine with the EU and NATO, combating hybrid threats, and emerging security challenges. For years she was fighting Russia's disinformation war against Ukraine. From February 24th is her country under military invasion ordered by Vladimir Putin and Maria stays in Kharkiv, even as the city faces heavy Russian shelling. I talked to Maria on March 3rd afternoon and originally the recording was not for a podcast, which means the sound quality is a bit lower. But Maria stays in Kharkiv because she wants to inform the world about what's going on and I decided that I want to help her to spread the message. I talked to her also just before the war started. Stand with Ukraine and listen to our conversation.

The number of casualties is growing as Russia wages its war in Ukraine. Will President Vladimir Putin escalate even further and why does he talk about nuclear weapons? I talked to Mark Galeotti who is, as his Twitter bio says, an analyst of murky topics from Russian politics to global crime. Dr. Galeotti is the director of the consultancy firm Mayak Intelligence. He is also an Honorary Professor at UCL School of Slavonic & East European Studies and a Senior Associate Fellow at RUSI. His books include We Need To Talk About Putin and most recently The Weaponisation of Everything. He is also a creator of the podcast In Moscow's Shadows. Why does Dr. Galeotti see some parallels between the Russian attack against Ukraine and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan? Listen to our conversation.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is a man of dark emotions. But it's good that the West still engages with Moscow diplomatically. This is what Andrei Kolesnikov thinks. He is a Senior Fellow and the Chair of the Russian Domestic Politics and Political Institutions Program at the Carnegie Moscow Center. We talked about Putin's decision system. if he listens to somebody and what it all means for the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Do you want to know when was Putin honest and if he gave us a road map of his intentions? This podcast was recorded on February 17, just before the current round of a huge escalation. Listen to our conversation.

Maria Avdeeva lives in Kharkiv, just 40 kilometers from the Russian border. She is a Research Director at the European Expert Association where she focuses on international security, cooperation of Ukraine with the EU and NATO, combating hybrid threats, and emerging security challenges. I talked to her on February 13 when we debated extremely tense situation as the Russian troops are surrounding Ukraine. Are people in Kharkiv panicking or are they ready to fight? How does she assess the Western support for Ukraine and why does she think that even if Russia starts a large-scale invasion it won't be able to control Ukrainian cities? Listen to our conversation.

To use her own words, she a disaster researcher and scientist for fiction with irrepressible curiosity about our wonderfully weird universe. This is how Mika McKinnon introduces yourself. If you listen to my podcast regularly, and I hope you do, you know that I usually cover foreign policy events and trends. But not exclusively, so this is an episode about disasters. Mika McKinnon is a perfect guest. Experienced and funny. We talked about the current Hunga Tonga eruption, about volcanoes and related risks and about how you cannot, I repeat, cannot trigger Yellowstone eruption by using nukes. But also about her fascinating research into landslides on asteroids. And did I mention that she is also a sci-fi science consultant? Most recently for the movie Moonfall but also for cult classics Sharknado, Stargate or Star Trek. Listen to our conversation