This month’s bulletin brings together new SOC ACE research on the changing relationship between states and organised crime, the political economies that sustain illicit activity, and the uneven development of conflict-affected borderlands.

We also explore scam compounds in the China–Myanmar borderlands, Russian war-related illicit trade across the Black Sea and the paramilitary–organised crime nexus in war-to-peace transitions. Alongside new publications, SOC ACE researchers are contributing to policy and academic discussions on state threats, sanctions evasion, corruption and hybrid warfare, with upcoming events in Krakow and Manchester.

New research explores how illicit economies connect conflict-affected borderlands with metropolitan centres, challenging the assumption that violence, poverty and environmental degradation result from isolation. It explores how flows of capital, commodities and people create unequal connections between margins and metropoles, shaping patterns of wealth, insecurity and development.

SOC ACE researchers will join leading experts at ECPR 2026 to examine how political, economic and social pressures are reshaping organised crime and responses to it.

Drawing on expertise from Tom Keatinge and Kinga Redlowska of the CFS, this commentary examines how sanctions can disrupt serious organised crime by targeting financial facilitators, logistics networks and other strategic enablers. It considers where sanctions can complement law enforcement and how effectiveness should be measured through disruption rather than designation numbers.

Research by Dr Alexander Kupatadze and Dr Erica Marat into changing patterns of serious crime and organised criminal activity across Eastern Europe and Central Asia has been covered by The New Voice of Ukraine. Their research examines how the war in Ukraine, sanctions, disrupted trade routes and population displacement are reshaping illicit markets and criminal networks across the region. The findings form part of the wider SOC ACE project, Exploring the Consequences of Organised Crime and Illegal Trade Displacement on Eurasia, which investigates how conflict and economic disruption are creating new opportunities and challenges for organised crime.