East-Central Europe is the region between German-, West Slavic- and Hungarian-speaking Europe and the Eastern Slavic lands of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine. Those lands are described as situated "between two": "between two worlds, between two stages, between two futures". In the geopolitical sense, East-Central Europe can be considered alongside Western and Eastern Europe, as one of the "Three Europes".
The concept differs from that of Central and Eastern Europe in that it is based on criteria whereby the states of Central and Eastern Europe belong to two different cultural and economic circles.
