Denise recently visited Ukraine. In this podcast, she shares her conclusions from her visit, a global view of how democracies are becoming fragile worldwide, and why Ukraine’s fight matters to the rest of the world.
Listen on various platforms: https://li.sten.to/explaining-ukraine
“What we've begun to witness in the past decade is a movement away from that democratic optimism. There's now a huge literature on democratic backsliding, as it's known because it's capturing a sentiment and a reality throughout the world.”
“Ukraine has survived based on support from democracies, but even those democracies may become illiberal.”
“Mexico is now moving into the camp of democracies that are under siege. With a judicial reform that the current administration passed it managed to create a supermajority in Congress in a very dishonest way.”
“Russia’s presence is expanding throughout the region in terms of geostrategic positioning via misinformation propaganda, trying to create chaos, undermine democratic governments. After the full scale invasion over 60 Russian diplomats were kicked out of Europe and ended up at the Russian Embassy in Mexico. The Russian Embassy here is now the largest Russian embassy in the world outside of Washington.”
“The democratic world is shrinking. It is becoming smaller as these authoritarian populisms and autocracies gain strength throughout the world. The arrival of North Korean troops to Russia is an emblematic example of how these autocracies support each other politically, financially, militarily, and in terms of global narratives.”
UkraineWorld is brought to you by Internews Ukraine, one of Ukraine’s largest media NGOs.
Support us at https://www.patreon.com/ukraineworld. We provide exclusive content for our patrons. You can also support our volunteer trips to the front lines at PayPal: ukraine.resisting@gmail.com.
This episode is produced in partnership with the Ukrainian Institute, the country’s major public and cultural diplomacy institution.
