Christian Heitmann

Journalist. Foreign and security policy in Central and Eastern Europe, Balkans, mostly. Tweets in English, auf Deutsch, po slovensky, na hrvatskom и по-русски.

[Christian Heitmann @Ch_A_Heitmann]

This project was a cooperation between @LeibnizIOS and the Institut za savremenu istoriju (ISI) in Belgrade, huge thanks to all colleagues for their advice and insight.
You'll find my work, "The Electrification of Yugoslavia 1919-1952: Ideas, Plans, Realities" in Chapter 3.

[Branislav Pavlovič @brano_pavlovic]

2⃣1⃣ August 1⃣9⃣6⃣8⃣
#Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia. The most famous photo was taken in #Bratislava, the #Slovak 🇸🇰 Capital. The name of the man who faced the tank is Emil Gallo (1924-1971).
📸 The name of the photographer is Ladislav Bielik

[Polymarket @Polymarket]

JUST IN: Scientific study reveals TikTok videos deactivate key cognitive brain regions.

[Daniel W. Drezner @dandrezner]

None of this would be happening if Elbridge Colby was still alive.

[Christian Heitmann @Ch_A_Heitmann]

Pretty amusing

[Дождь @tvrain]

«Иноагент» Антон Михальчук отправил 1100 рублей лидеру «Родины» из-за границы и предложил снять партию с выборов за «иностранное финансирование»

👇🏼 Подробности читайте в треде

[Carlo "Realism, Gedankenfetzen and Rants" Masala @CarloMasala1]

Ukraine is once again a victim of American strategic stupidity. You’ve triggered one of the biggest oil crises since World War II by starting a foolish war, and now you’re worried about the price of oil.

[Corey Walker 🇺🇸 @CoreyWriting]

The underperformances of Abdul El-Sayed and Francesca Hong suggest that the Democrats are going to have massive electoral problems if they just embrace the socialist revolution trying to capture their party. There are clear and obvious vulnerabilities with these candidates and they are struggling to match their polling hype when people actually show up to vote.

[Rob Lee @RALee85]

“Ukraine has stopped reporting how many missiles Russia fired during attacks, as it continues to appeal to allies to help strengthen its air defenses.

While the Air Defense Forces said 98 of 120 Russian drones were downed overnight, it omitted data on the number of missiles fired. That came days after it ceased reporting interceptions of ballistic missiles, following an attack last week in which Ukraine failed to stop any of 28 projectiles.

The Air Defense Forces has changed its reporting format as a security measure in response to Russian strikes, according to a person familiar with the matter, asking not to be identified because the matter is sensitive.”
https://t.co/y7meGkhDga

[Michael Kofman @KofmanMichael]

The likelihood is low, but growing. Russian recruitment is still close to their targets, but this year has been a near complete offensive failure for them. However, it is already too late to generate new units from mobilization for 2026 so this would expand the force for 2027.

[Kein Mensch Kein Tier @KampfmitKette]

Es ist unglaublich wieviel Glück alle Beteiligten in Leipzig am Flughafen hatten. Wir hätte jetzt auch 2 brennende Flugzeuge und mindestens zwei Toten haben können. Ich bin wirklich überrascht wie wenig bisher sich die Politik dazu äußert.

[Black Bird Group @Black_BirdGroup]

According to our data, in July the net gains of the Russian armed forces in Ukraine were approximately 106km².

This is the fastest Russian advance since January, but their gains remain extremely limited. In July of 2025 the Russians captured nearly 5 times as much territory.

1/

[Christian Heitmann @Ch_A_Heitmann]

Ah yes, the fairly normal experience of getting shot in the back when you try to leave.

[Garett Jones @GarettJones]

This empirical claim by Helen Andrews is entirely false:

[QC @QiaochuYuan]

every time

[Janis Kluge @jakluge]

Attention: new original data source unlocked! Based on federal budget reports, I estimated the number of Russian troops in Ukraine, both mobilized and contract soldiers. The numbers are based on different salary top-ups that Russian troops in Ukraine receive.

[Tolkien World @TolkienWorldG]

It is likely we go to our doom….

[Dionis Cenușa @DionisCenusa]

Morocco is instrumentalizing the illegal crossing of its citizens into the Spanish overseas territories of Ceuta and Melilla.

The EU should speak up against hybrid threats from Morocco just as it does in the case of the smuggling of illegal migrants by Belarus into Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia during the last five years.

@eu_eeas and @kajakallas have to issue a statement of solidarity with Spain and start working on sanctions against the Moroccan authorities for instrumentalizing illegal crossings.

If Belarusian actions are treated as hybrid threats, so should be the behavior of Morocco.

[Christopher Miller @ChristopherJM]

Russian refineries hit by Ukrainian drone strikes have lost around 45% of production capacity overall
https://t.co/xqkqJGr1Hr via @FT

[Eli Albrecht @Elialbrecht]

When I was a lawyer at Gibson Dunn in D.C., we took our summer associates to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. A survivor spoke to us and said something that stuck with me:

Lawyers need to know the holocaust did not begin with camps. It began when Jews were removed from institutions - above all, legal institutions. Judges stripped of their robes. Lawyers disbarred. Then, when law-groups were Judenrein, they codified laws that made discrimination systematic and "legal."

First, you remove the Jews from the institutions. Then, Jews can be discriminated against without representation.

On Monday, Mayor Mamdani announced his 18-member Advisory Committee on the Judiciary. The Committee was promised to be "truly reflective of New York City."

Not one of the 18 is Jewish.

Not one Jewish attorney, former judge, or law professor - in a city where one in eight residents is Jewish and even Justice John Leventhal, recommended by the State's Chief Judge, was rejected.

It is estimated that over 50% of the New York bar is Jewish. That means there is a 0.0004% chance of no Jews being selected to the Committee.

Mamdani’s marginalization of Jews has been ongoing, and few voices on the Left have spoken up.

On Day 1, Mamdani revoked the IHRA antisemitism definition (top priority); he changed the NYPD guidance protecting houses of worship, eliminated Jews from the City's immigrant-heritage map, called for the arrest of the prime minister of the only Jewish state, and now created a Judenrein Judiciary Committee.

My grandmother, Leah, survived Nazi Germany. Before the laws, before the violence, she told me how she was pushed out of her high school groups. Then, once excluded from all activities, she was bullied and marginalized.

We are already seeing Step 2 in NYC. Two weeks ago, on a Jewish Holiday, two men were stabbed outside Upper West Side synagogues - one wearing a kippah- and yesterday, Jewish students were attacked. Every 26 hours, there is a hate crime against Jews in NYC.

In NYC, there is a concerted effort to disappear Jews from public life and leadership.

No one on the Left is speaking out. If this discrimination was happening to any other group, the chorus would be deafening.

To be clear, Jews will find a way. Many are already taking their talents elsewhere. When white-shoe firms shut Jewish lawyers out, they built firms that now dominate. Cardozo, Louis Marshall, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg all found a way despite discrimination.

But NYC will be worse off without us. A city government that is judenrein - cleansed of Jews – does not just hurt the Jews, but hurts the city.

The tragedy is not just that Jews were left out of the institutions. It is that the institutions were left without the Jews.

If you see this and have not yet spoken out, I encourage you to do so.

[Nathan Livingstone (MilkBarTV) @TheMilkBarTV]

Tucker Carlson's favourite "political scientist", John Mearsheimer, and his ATROCIOUS predictions on the war in Ukraine:

Feb. 2022: "I don't think Russia is going to invade."
Sep. 2023: "The Ukrainians are doomed to lose."
Jan. 2024: "It's ridiculous to think Ukraine can hold the line in 2024."
Apr. 2025: "It's unimaginable Ukraine will hang on beyond 2025."
Jul. 2026: "The Russians are slowly moving forward."

The Jim Cramer of foreign policy predictions.

[OSINTtechnical @Osinttechnical]

New estimates of American Patriot PAC-3 and THAAD anti-ballistic missile interceptor stockpiles in American inventory from CSIS.

Roughly a third of pre-war Patriot interceptors are estimated to remain.

[Christian Heitmann @Ch_A_Heitmann]

Also hard to overstate is the disaster which has been the German Atomausstieg.

[Daniel Kral @DanielKral1]

Hard to overstate the importance of France for Europe's energy security. Its nuclear fleet is the backbone of our power supply. Oil and gas price shocks matter, but it's when the French nuclear fleet stutters - as in 2022 - that European energy prices really shoot up.