Russia's war against Ukraine is an attempt to settle outstanding post-imperial scores and consolidate spheres of influence. It is also about real and perceived cultural and political boundaries in Europe, including the old familiar problem of what is Central and Eastern Europe. "Central Europe is culturally in the West, politically in the East, geographically in the centre." This is how the Czech writer Milan Kundera described the "tragedy of Central Europe" in an essay published in 1983. The thesis of Central Europe as a "hijacked West" sparked an extensive debate among the region's intellectuals - its Dichter und Denker - that contributed not only to changing its self-conception, but also to transforming the mental geography of the continent in Western