The pro-Western president of Moldova, Maia Sandu, won re-election on Sunday in a high-stakes runoff vote in the former Soviet republic against a rival candidate she had denounced as “Moscow’s man.”
The vote — held a week after a contested election in Georgia, another former Soviet territory, handed victory to the Moscow-leaning governing party — has been closely watched by the United States, the European Union and Russia as a critical test of Moldova’s direction.
I mean that the term refers to regions that were formerly USSR/Warsaw Pact/communist for up to 50-80 years in the 20th century. What does Estonia have in common with Slovenia? What does Poland have in common with Georgia? The Baltics, Central Europe, Balkans, Caucuses, Black Sea, Karelia, Dnieper/Kiev region, Volga/Moscow region, and the Urals are all distinct regions with distinct history and culture that shouldn’t be lumped together as “Eastern Europe”
Western Europe has commonalities like germanic/romance languages, feudalism, lasting French/German/British empires, and the origins of the EU, which can’t be said for Eastern. It may even be more accurate to describe Western Europe as Scandinavian, West Germanic, French, Mediterranean, and British Islands. Either way, dividing Europe into an arbitrary East/West is just chauvinist neo-colonialism by Western Europe, where the countries of the EU project are treating the eastern frontier as a poorer, less developed “other”. The EU project is meant to unite all Europeans as equals in democracy, and alienating former communist countries undermines that.
Video essay on the subject:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVXgqZIsViI