Regional elections in two state in eastern Germany have seen a rise in support for celebrations on the extreme straight and extreme left as Russia continues to bomb Ukrainian cities with attacks and advance along the front in Donbas.
What is especially concerning is that both parties support Ukraine while supporting a more Kremlin-aligned perspective of the Russian aggression against Ukraine. They owe the West the most of the blame for provocation of Russia, tapping into a tank of apprehension about being dragged into a full-fledged defense conflict with Moscow.
For opinions, and their success at the ballot box, are not exclusive to the former East Germany. Similar sentiments have risen in other countries in central and eastern Europe that were under Communist rule up until 1989, most notably among EU and NATO members Hungary and Slovakia.
Similar things are true for some former Soviet Union says, like Georgia and Azerbaijan. This does not mean the Soviet union was being restored by cunning, but rather that at least some of that region’s residents are resonant with an odd mix of fear, hatred, and memories.
In Hungary, this pro-Russian place is largely associated with the country’s nationalist prime minister Viktor Orban. Since taking office in 2010, Orban has shifted his state and his own country away from the liberal political principles he supported in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
The European Commission and legislature are now furious about Orbán’s denigration of democracy and the rule of rules.
Hungary has been fined by the European Court of Justice for intentionally violating EU asylum rules by paying a €200 million ( US$ 221 million ) fine. None of those prevented Orbán from capturing a fifth straight victory in 2022’s national elections, but it also resulted in his party receiving less than 50 % of the voting in the 2024 German elections.
For the first time in 20 years, Orbán reaffirmed his support for Putin position in Western elections, winning less than half of the voting.
He was the EU and NATO member’s primary to hand Donald Trump his hat. He repeated the same prank in Moscow in October 2023, just weeks after Hungary assumed the rotating presidency of the EU in July 2024, in Beijing.
His Czech rival, Robert Fico, regained his country’s championship in October 2023, even on a more pro-Russian and anti-Ukrainian program.
In contrast to Orban, Fico is a left-leaning nationalist and has moderated his position on Ukraine since making a January 2024 visit to Kiev. In the presidential primaries in April 2024, the general pro-Russian mood was palpable among the majority of the public.
Other officials have also cooped up with Putin, besides NATO and the EU. One instance is Azerbaijan’s long-serving king, Ilham Aliyev, who visited Moscow in April 2024 and welcomed Putin to Baku in August.
Azerbaijan has been a key partner of Russia since the start of the conflict with Ukraine in February 2022, providing access to trade hallways that are crucial for avoiding American sanctions. The global north-south transportation passageway that connects Russia through Azerbaijan to Iran is one of them.
Azerbaijan also submitted its formal application to join the BRICS empire ( Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa ) a moment after Putin’s attend in August. It likewise applied, at the end of July, for observer standing in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, bringing Azerbaijan one step closer to full participation in the Chinese-led union.
Georgia is another example of how political registration in the post-Soviet world is slowly slipping into pro-Russian monarchy. Tbilisi and Moscow have eventually rekindled relations under the Georgian Dream social group, which has been in power for more than a decade, despite the Russian-Georgian conflict of 2008, under the leadership of the country for more than a decade.
Philosophically, the Greek government remains determined to EU account. A December 2023 German Council decision , granted , Georgia candidate-country position. Since the spring, when the government in Tbilisi rammed through the so-called , foreign providers law despite open and International protests, relations with the EU have deteriorated considerably.
The law, which is based on just expanded Russian policy, serves as a potentially valuable resource for Georgia’s authorities to encircle the activities of pro-European civil society organizations.
Authoritarian fall
Russia as the aggressor state enjoys a kind of rise in love after more than two and a half years of a terrible war, which must be alarming for Ukraine and its European partners.
The totalitarian trend in northeast Germany, Slovakia, Hungary, Azerbaijan, and Georgia did not begin with the Ukrainian conflict, but it has certainly gotten worse.
The democratic leaders driving it leverage on, and thoroughly route, various public sentiments. One of these is a long-standing concern about starting a war with Russia. Another is the anger of a self-serving social establishment that has handled the Covid fallout and the Ukraine war-stricken cost-of-living crisis poorly.
There is also, at least for some, a sense of nostalgia for the “order” that powerful, essentially socially liberal, Communist leaders at the time imposed, in contrast to the liberal” chaos” that have developed since.
The kind of political stalling seen elsewhere in the original Soviet bloc may be stopped and reversed with the results of last year’s presidential elections in the Czech Republic and legislative elections in Poland.
Also, Armenia’s decision to pull out of the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organization — a little post-Soviet Warsaw Pact son — indicates that political configurations are not set in stone.
These changes indicate a dysfunctional German and global surveillance order. What kind of fresh purchase is most likely to emerge from the Ukraine war and how it ends.
However, with the rise of proper- and left-wing democracy, of older and newer autocracies, and their intellectual position with the Kremlin, a note of extreme precaution is that the reconstruction of a new liberal order is not without a doubt, despite of who, if any, wins in Ukraine.
Stefan Wolff is a University of Birmingham professor of global stability.
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