This is a very insightful thread, thank you for sharing!

This part alone is a fantastic summary of it all:

Eastern Europe has long been cast as a form of malleable buffer zone and space of competition between the West and Russia. Eastern European interests have been defined only or primarily in reference to Western and Russian interests, and Eastern European lived experience has been seen as no more than a form of peripheral discourse that is either serving or reacting against the two centres that are pulling it in opposite directions.