Is Russia at war with Europe? For Czech President Petr Pavel, that is a non-question.

At the GLOBSEC security conference, Pavel delivered a stark assessment of the Russian threat, declaring that Russia views its relationship with Western democracies as “continuous conflict” rather than traditional periods of peace and war.

The warning comes as NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte prepares allies for a potential agreement on 5% GDP defense spending at the upcoming Hague summit in June, with Pavel confirming that “if the discussion in The Hague leads us to a general agreement that we need to spend up to 5%, Czech Republic is ready to support it.”

Russia is in a “kind of war” with Western democracies

Pavel, a former NATO Military Committee chairman, outlined a fundamental difference in how Russia approaches international relations compared to Western nations.

“We still divide the periods of history into peace, crisis, and war. Russia is not doing that,” Pavel explained during the conference. “They see history as a continuous conflict where only means and intensity change. So for them, they are actually in a kind of war with Western democracies.”

Currently, Pavel noted, Russia employs “mostly cyber and hybrid tools” against the West, “but this may change very quickly because, as I say, they really see it as a continuity.”

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Economic pressure over military force

When pressed on how Europe can compel Russia to negotiate, Pavel emphasized economic tools over military intervention.

“Frankly, I don’t think that Europe alone has the power to push President Putin to the table,” he said. “We need other countries, and especially the United States, on board at the same frequency.”

Pavel argued that Russia’s economic vulnerabilities present the best leverage: “The only way how to convince President Putin that the time has come to sit at the table is really to push him to the brink of economic collapse. It’s not about bringing Russia down. It’s simply bringing them to the table to negotiate the future.”

NATO’s 5% spending push gains momentum

The GLOBSEC appearance coincides with accelerating discussions within NATO about dramatically increasing defense spending, with Rutte proposing 3.5% for core military expenditures and 1.5% for broader security investments including infrastructure and cybersecurity.

Pavel warned that a seven-year timeline to reach these targets may not provide adequate preparation time given Russia’s ambitions.

“Russia has an ambition to reconstitute the Soviet Union as a global power,” he stated. “It would be very naive to believe that President Putin will not be tempted to use the power he has – the power of war economy – to at least try to test NATO unity and resolve.”

Czech Republic’s role

Pavel highlighted Czechia’s position as already exceeding the current 2% NATO spending target and committed to reaching 3% in coming years. The country has also led international efforts to supply artillery ammunition to Ukraine.

Pavel directed pointed remarks toward neighboring countries: “When it comes to the Czech Republic, the Russian assessment is that we are a hostile country, we are an enemy, and we are a traitor. So why should we consider Russia as a neutral country to us?”

He added: “I hope this was heard loud and clear also in other neighboring countries – in Bratislava or Budapest as well.”

After Ukraine’s stunning Operation Spiderweb damaged over 40 Russian strategic bombers on 1 June, President Trump took a 75-minute phone call with Vladimir Putin. Putin warned he would “have to respond,” Trump reported. Days later, as Russian missiles rained on Ukrainian apartments and cafes, Trump offered his analysis: the war was like “two young children fighting like crazy” in a park, and “sometimes you’re better off letting them fight for a while.”

The Kremlin loved it. Western media ran with “retaliation” headlines. But to mindlessly adopt the vocabulary of the aggressor is to excuse the crimes. At best, it’s lazy. At worst, it’s complicity by another name.

How Western media adopts Putin’s narrative

This latest episode perfectly captures a dangerous pattern that has defined Western coverage of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Failing to grasp Russia’s criminal war for what it is — whether out of ignorance, indifference, or false hope of normalizing relations — telegraphs to Moscow not only America’s weakness, but its moral ambivalence, if not overt permission.

Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb was a singular event, while Russian suicide drones, guided aerial bombs, and ballistic missiles have hit Ukrainian cities with such regularity that they no longer make headlines — just body counts.

Why Russia cannot be a victim of its own war

A rapist is not the victim of rape. A rapist is the perpetrator.

Russia is not — and cannot, by definition — be the victim of its own unprovoked war of aggression. It is the perpetrator. Apply even a shred of logic, and the distinction becomes obvious: Ukraine can retaliate. Russia cannot. Retaliation is a right reserved for the attacked — not the attacker.

While editorial errors were too many to count, the prize for the most cruel headline goes to The Washington Post, which recently described defensive strikes as “Ukraine’s dirty war.” As if targeting military assets inside an aggressor state were somehow morally equivalent to Russia’s daily slaughter of civilians.

The article itself was well-written and nuanced — alluding to the actual dirty war Russia has been waging against the West, from polonium poisonings in the UK to deployment of mercenaries to destabilize Africa — which makes the choice of headline all the more baffling. A free gift to Kremlin propagandists.

Let us, once and for all, state the obvious: there is no “conflict” in Ukraine. This is a war of conquest — deliberate, sustained, and criminal under the very rules established after World War II.

Moscow’s war is not a tragic misunderstanding or a geopolitical chess match between great powers with Ukraine as a mere pawn.

Russia has been killing Ukrainians for the crime of being Ukrainian since 2014 — predictably, methodically, relentlessly. Ukraine is fighting because the alternative is not peace, but annihilation.

How Russia’s information warfare succeeds in the West

Moscow doesn’t separate kinetic warfare from the so-called “active measures” – disinformation, corruption, infiltration, sabotage, or covert operations — they’re all components of the Gerasimov Doctrine.

But the real scandal is not that Moscow deploys these tools — it’s that the West keeps falling for them.

Worse, we amplify them. Our commentators give airtime to lies. Our most respected outlets parrot enemy framing, wittingly or not. And all the while, a gang of war criminals in the Kremlin smiles, watching as we dignify their deceit with click-bait headlines and poison our own public discourse.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov eagerly seized on Trump’s playground analogy, calling the war “existential” for Russia.

In truth, it is existential only for Ukraine. For Russia, it is optional — a war of choice that could end tomorrow if Moscow stopped waging it. Each day it chooses otherwise, Russian war crimes compound. But when the White House implies both sides are comparably at fault, it reinforces the Kremlin’s central lie.

Ending the war is not in Ukraine’s hands. Peace will come when the revanchist zombie empire stops trying to re-colonize its neighbours.

America’s mixed signals embolden Putin

While Ukraine pleads for help, the United States, reportedly, diverted 20,000 anti-drone missiles — badly needed to defend civilian areas — away from Ukraine to other deployments. What Washington calls “balance,” Moscow reads as tacit acquiescence.

Under international law, Ukraine has the legal right to self-defense against Russia’s illegal war of aggression — a right explicitly affirmed in Article 51 of the UN Charter.

Russian attacks — whether by Iranian-sourced Shahed drones, North Korean artillery shells, or any other means — are not responses. They are the methodical continuation of a war it chose.

To call them retaliation is to legitimize the death and destruction Moscow unleashed.

The stakes: Putin’s victory means global tyranny

Russia’s own former Foreign Minister (1990-1996), Andrei V. Kozyrev, explained in a tweet: if Russia is not defeated in Ukraine, Putin’s dollar-hungry mafia state will solidify into a victorious militarist tyranny driven by hateful anti-Western ideology. Today’s warmongering and hollow nuclear threats against the West will then become real.

Since Moscow first invaded a sovereign neighbor — Georgia, in 2008 — the so-called Free World has excelled at self-deterrence, moved on to self-sabotage, and now flirts with self-extinction.

We can do better. But if we don’t, we’ll have no one to blame but ourselves.

Andrew Chakhoyan

Andrew Chakhoyan is an Academic Director at the University of Amsterdam and a former U.S. government official at the Millennium Challenge Corporation. A Ukrainian-American, he studied at Harvard Kennedy School and Donetsk State Technical University.

Editor’s note. The opinions expressed in our Opinion section belong to their authors. Euromaidan Press’ editorial team may or may not share them.

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“We fucked up.” It’s not often you hear a democracy activist open with those words, but Nino Robakidze, a veteran democracy activist with over 15 years fighting for Georgian freedom, isn’t interested in pretty narratives.

Speaking at the “FuckUp Night” panel at the Lviv Media Forum 2025, Robakidze laid bare how Georgian civil society enabled the fastest documented democratic collapse in modern European history.

The timeline is breathtaking: December 2023, Georgia receives EU candidate status. Eighteen months later, dozens of political prisoners, including four high-profile politicians, fill Georgian jails, independent media faces criminal prosecution, and the government has abandoned European integration entirely. Over 200 public servants were fired simply for posting pro-European statements on Facebook.

“Georgian civil society is in a perfect storm,” she says. “We saw the red flags. We really saw the red flags. But it was so uncomfortable to really talk about that.”

From EU dreams to Russian nightmare in record time

Twenty-one years after the Rose Revolution promised Georgia a European future, the country has achieved something unprecedented: the fastest documented slide from EU candidate to authoritarian crackdown in European history.

The timeline is breathtaking.

• December 2023: EU grants Georgia candidate status.
• May 2024: Government passes Russian-style “foreign agent” law.
• October 2024: Elections marked by widespread fraud.
• November 2024: Government suspends EU talks.
• January 2025: First female journalist political prisoner.

The halt to EU accession talks were the straw that broke the camel’s back. Polls show 80% of Georgians want EU membership—one of the highest rates in any candidate country.

What followed was six months of non-stop protests across Georgia—unprecedented in the country’s history. Police have violently dispersed demonstrators using water cannons and tear gas against crowds singing the EU anthem.

Hundreds have been arrested, including Mzia Amaglobeli, co-founder of independent outlets Batumelebi and Netgazeti, who faces up to seven years in prison for symbolically slapping a police chief after he allegedly spat in her face and verbally abused her. She became Georgia’s first female journalist to be designated a political prisoner.

But Robakidze, former Country Director for IREX Georgia, isn’t just analyzing the crisis—she’s dissecting how democracy defenders like herself enabled it through a fatal dependency that made Georgian freedom hostage to foreign funding.

For two decades, the US government poured millions into Georgian civil society—building the independent media, NGOs, and democracy programs that became the envy of the former Soviet space. That investment created something genuinely remarkable: a vibrant civil society that helped Georgia become a beacon of democratic progress in the region.

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The fatal dependency: how Western money created the weapon to destroy democracy

For two decades, Georgian civil society lived on life support: US government funding. Independent media, NGOs, democracy programs—all relied heavily on American largesse because local businesses feared government retaliation for supporting critical outlets.

“This was mainly the US government funding because there was not enough advertising money in independent media,” Robakidze explains. Vulnerable to state pressure, “big business did not want to work with media outlets like this because they were investigating government corruption.”

But the irony runs deeper—and darker. Western funding didn’t just create the vulnerability; it actively trained the oppressors.

Georgian Dream created Western-funded strategic communication units across government ministries. “And then this communication in the crisis, when the crisis was approaching, was used against those who were actually protecting Western values—civil society, media, free media, etc.”

The absurdity was complete: civil society trained its own oppressors. “We were inviting representatives of this group to different trainings, on strategic communication, on public opinion research, and they learned the lesson really well. Maybe they were the best in their class, actually.”

The students became the masters, using Western-funded skills to dismantle Western values.

Playing fair while opponents cheated

Civil society’s commitment to democratic norms became another vulnerability. While democracy defenders insisted on fact-checking, verification, and due process, their opponents weaponized speed and fabrication.

During Georgia’s October 2024 elections, civil society deployed 3,000 trained observers who knew by 11 AM they were witnessing “the worst election in Georgian democratic history.” But while they spent the day meticulously fact-checking evidence of fraud, Georgian Dream simply declared victory at 8 PM.

“We struggled to communicate this on time because we were checking each and every case, double-checking it,” Robakidze recalls. “But we lost the battle of the very important, crucial minute.”

Civil society eventually proved the elections were fraudulent—no international observer recognized the results as legitimate. But Georgian Dream had already won by ignoring the verification process that constrained their opponents.

“We collected all this evidence… But we lost the battle of the very important, crucial minute,” Robakidze reflects. It revealed a global pattern: authoritarian forces exploit democracy’s commitment to due process, turning democratic values into democratic vulnerabilities.

The statistical proof

Stolen election: how the Georgian Dream helped itself to 15% of all votes cast

Media massacre: systematic destruction of independent voices

The government’s media strategy went beyond funding manipulation—it became systematic annihilation. In April 2025, the Georgian Public Broadcaster fired two prominent journalists—Nino Zautashvili and Vasil Ivanov-Chikovani—after they openly criticized the channel’s editorial policy. Ivanov-Chikovani had stated live on air that the broadcaster’s editorial policy “fails to meet the public’s demands.”

The broadcaster’s supervisory board, headed by Vasil Maghlaperidze—a former deputy chair of the ruling Georgian Dream party—called for prosecutors to investigate journalists who criticized the channel’s coverage. The message was clear: dissent will be criminalized.

Since May 2024, more than 30 journalists covering the “foreign agent” bill have been targeted with anonymous threatening phone calls. Unknown individuals plastered posters on journalists’ homes and offices, denouncing them as “foreign agents” with messages like “There is no place in Georgia for agents.”

The new Foreign Agents Registration Act grants the state authority to criminally prosecute media outlets, NGOs, and individuals for failing to register as a “foreign agent,” with penalties of up to five years in prison. As one media executive warned: “We will work as volunteers as long as we can… But I cannot take any money from any donor past May 30, because I don’t want to go to jail.”

More than 70 journalists have been injured while covering protests, with some hospitalized. The systematic nature is unmistakable: this isn’t random violence but coordinated destruction of independent media.

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The confession: “I was not fierce enough”

For Robakidze, the crisis forced brutal self-examination. Could civil society have prevented this catastrophe?

“I always ask myself: did I do everything I could to convince my colleagues and those with whom I worked closely that what is happening is dangerous, and this might lead in a very wrong direction?”

Her answer haunts her: “I think that no, I did not.”

She was part of the problem—attending conferences, sitting at tables with government representatives, participating in dialogues even as the warning signs mounted. “Maybe I was not fierce enough, and maybe the urgent situation that we have now would not have been needed if we started being really fierce and dramatic on the very first cases.”

The first red flag came just months after the peaceful 2012 transition, when Georgian Dream defeated Mikheil Saakashvili’s United National Movement in parliamentary elections. The victory was celebrated as a triumph of Georgian democracy—the first peaceful transfer of power in the post-Soviet space.

But the honeymoon was brief. On 17 May 2013—International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia—a small solidarity gathering of maybe 50 people, mostly journalists and human rights defenders, planned to remember LGBTQI+ victims in Tbilisi’s city center.

Instead, they were attacked by a massive, organized mob, with things getting so out of hand that the 50 protesters needed to be bussed out.

For Robakidze, this wasn’t random violence—it was a test. “At that moment Georgia government had a really brilliant police structure. There was no way, no chance, if the state wanted to protect these people, that things could get so ugly and so violent.”

The attack was “visible that it was organized… And those people were having the blessing or green light from the government and Ministry of Interior.”

The red flag was a warning of things to come: 12 years later, the Georgian police disperses hundred-thousand-strong protests; the state’s repressive apparatus has been fully unleashed on the people.

More red flags followed. In 2016, Azerbaijani investigative journalist Afgan Mukhtarli was kidnapped from Tbilisi’s Freedom Square and appeared in an Azerbaijani prison. No footage existed. “We knew that there was no possibility without state interference for such things to happen.”

But civil society and international partners found it easier to focus on Georgia’s successes than confront uncomfortable realities—so they were ignored.

The lesson crystallized too late: “There is no small compromise with non-freedom. If you compromise that small thing, you definitely need to compromise the bigger thing tomorrow.”

Why Georgia will still win: the freedom advantage

Despite the catastrophic failures, Robakidze remains optimistic about Georgia’s ultimate victory. Her reasoning cuts to the heart of what separates Georgia from Russia and Belarus—and why this matters for democracies worldwide.

“Georgia was a democracy for 30 years. And we enjoyed the freedom of speech, freedom of arts, freedom of movement, everything,” she says. “We tasted freedom.”

Even under Soviet rule, Georgia maintained psychological independence. “Even during the Soviet Union, Georgia was still having that sense of freedom alive because of the language we were using, which was never Russian.”

This creates a fundamental difference from Georgia’s neighbors: “We are genuinely not part of the Russian thinking world.” The government’s target audience—those susceptible to pro-Russian messaging—consists mainly of “mostly older men in regions who had only good things happening in their early years” and “have the sentiments of the Soviet Union.”

But the crucial difference is ideological. Georgian Dream lacks what Putin possesses: an ideology, which makes long-term authoritarian consolidation questionable.

The government is “on their lowest level. Lowest approval ratings in their 12-year history.”

From dependency to independence: The silver lining

The loss of US funding, while painful, may have been necessary medicine. For the first time, Georgian civil society is learning to survive independently.

“Now, first time I see that really viable… society will support independent media and society will support civil society actions,” Robakidze observes. “Whatever happens right now is completely 100% financed by ordinary citizens who are just crowdfunding.”

This grassroots renaissance extends beyond civil society. “We also see for the first time big business also understanding the responsibility that if things go wrong in this part, we can die with them as well.”

The protests themselves represent this new independence. You cannot find “the industry or the sphere where the most prominent people are not part of the protest in Georgia.” All major theaters, singers, and composers have joined the streets. “These are theaters that young people are going to, and you cannot find a ticket for months if you want to attend a theater.”

Even government employees are risking everything. More than 200 public servants were fired simply for posting pro-European statements on Facebook—a purge that backfired by revealing the government’s desperation and creating martyrs.

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Global warning: your democracy is next

Georgia’s crisis reflects a global phenomenon that Robakidze calls the “spirit of non-freedom spreading.” The mechanics are eerily familiar across continents.

“A lot of people in the world were living many years thinking that freedom is granted and guaranteed, taking freedom for granted,” she explains. “In Europe, in the US, in the West in general, they had this problem maybe even deeper than the Georgian society has.”

Western societies “allowed in their societies this darkness to spread without reacting to it when it’s needed.”

The warning signs are identical:

• Small compromises that seem manageable
• External funding creating dependency vulnerabilities
• Strategic communication training weaponized against democracy
• Media capture through economic pressure
• Civil society taking freedom for granted.

“Right now weather is the worst for beginner democracies,” she warns. But the crisis is a “wake-up call for not just for us, for societies who want to be democratic and consolidated democracies one day, but for everyone.”

The clock is ticking

As Georgia’s protests continue into their seventh month, the timeline offers a stark warning: democratic collapse can happen faster than anyone imagines. Eighteen months from EU candidate to authoritarian crackdown.

“There is never a bad time to think about your mistakes, and we can never be uncomfortable discussing the elephant in the room, because this elephant will never go anywhere,” Robakidze reflects. “And the only problem that this discussion creates is this uncomfortable feeling, which I think is very important—better experienced earlier than later.”

The uncomfortable truth: external funding made Georgian democracy vulnerable by creating dependency rather than genuine grassroots strength. But losing that crutch may have forced the authentic resistance needed to survive.

Georgia faces its ultimate test—not just of its democratic institutions, but of whether a society that truly tasted freedom can recognize and defeat authoritarianism when it matters most. The answer will determine not just Georgia’s fate, but offer crucial lessons for every democracy grappling with its own “spirit of non-freedom.”

For Robakidze, the fight continues: “We will not let Georgia slide back under Russia’s influence.” The question is whether the world’s other democracies will learn from Georgia’s mistakes before their own 18-month countdown begins.

Ukrainian analyst Dmytro Zolotukhin recently posed a haunting question: Ukraine has been striving to be a democracy ever since it regained independence, but aren’t Ukrainians, by chance, playing in the team of losers now?

“Absolutely not,” rebutted Timothy Garton Ash at the 2025 Lviv Media Forum, the British historian and Professor of European Studies at Oxford University, whose latest book, “Homelands: A Personal History of Europe,” chronicles the continent’s transformation over half a century and won the 2024 Lionel Gelber Prize.

“You’re on the winning team. It just may take a bit of time for the victory to come.”

Ash, Europe’s self-described “historian of the present” who has spent decades “breathing Europe,” believes democracy is experiencing growing pains, not death throes.

In fact, he argues that Putin’s war against Ukraine proves democracy’s enduring power.

Ash believes that one of the reasons for Russia’s ongoing invasion was the 2004 Orange Revolution, in which Ukrainians rebelled against the electoral fraud that gave a pro-Russian president victory instead of a Western-leaning candidate: “Putin thought that democracy was coming towards him, in addition to his motives of restoring the Russian Empire.”

The strength of democracy, Ash contends, is evidenced by its unprecedented expansion: “According to Freedom House, in early 1974, there were only 35 free countries in the world. By early 2004, 89.”

What we’re witnessing now, he suggests, is not democracy’s failure but a natural “anti-liberal, anti-democratic counter-revolution” in response to this historic spread, despite all of liberal democracy’s faults. The autocracies and hybrid regimes are simply not delivering—hundreds of thousands of people protesting in Hungary, Serbia, and Hungary are proof of that, Ash believes.

But the data tells a different story

Reality, however, presents a more sobering picture: democracy is hemorrhaging support worldwide at an unprecedented pace.

Only 6.6% of the world’s population live in states defined as full democracies, while 72% live in autocracies—a historic reversal that has seen the global Democracy Index score fall from 5.52 in 2006 to an unprecedented low of 5.17 in 2024.

Even the Western democracies Ukraine aspires to join are backsliding. France’s score fell below the threshold to qualify as a “full democracy” and was downgraded to a “flawed democracy” in 2024.

The United States continues to be classified as a “flawed democracy,” ranked 28th globally. Hungary has recorded the biggest decline ever measured, plummeting to become a “transitional” or “hybrid regime.” When weighted by population, the level of democracy in Europe has fallen back forty years, to where it was in 1978.

Between 2020 and 2024, in one in five elections worldwide, losing candidates publicly rejected the outcome.

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Democracy’s three critical ailments

Despite this grim landscape, Timothy Garton Ash maintains his diagnosis offers hope. The historian identifies three fundamental weaknesses that have made democracies vulnerable to authoritarian assault:

1. Democracy degrading into oligarchy

“The great achievement of modern liberal democracy was to separate wealth and power,” Ash explained. “Most of human history, wealth and power have gone together. In oligarchy, they come back together.”

Ukraine knows this threat intimately from its own struggle with oligarchs. But even in established democracies, the lines are blurring dangerously. “Now, even in the United States, we see, with Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and all the tech bros, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos and others, lining up to support him, democracy degrading into oligarchy.”

2. Liberalism creating its own resistance

The second ailment emerges from democracy’s own successes. “What was associated with liberalism over the last 40 years, in particular neoliberalism, globalized, financialized capitalism, but to some extent also identity politics, left a huge part of our societies, in countries like Britain or America, feeling both economically and culturally neglected.”

Into this vacuum step the populists, who revolt against the “liberal cosmopolitan elites” and the big cities.

“They say, we hear you. We’re on your side. And they counterpose democracy to liberalism.” They claim to speak for “the people”—but as Ash notes, “it’s not the whole people. It’s only one part of the people.”

Trump himself once distinguished between “the people, and then there are the other people. And the other people are the bloody foreigners, quote, unquote. The immigrants, the outsiders, the others.”

3. Fragmentation of the public sphere

Democracy depends on shared reality, Ash argues, invoking ancient Athens: “All the citizens meet on the Pnyx. They hear all the facts. They can debate freely all the different policy options. And then together they decide to fight the invading Persians on sea rather than on land, which is how they win the Battle of Salamis.”

Today’s digital revolution has shattered this foundation.

“What’s happened over the years over the last 40 years is because of the digital revolution in media, we have the phenomenon of both monopoly, Facebook, Google, and fragmentation, so that we are losing the kind of public sphere, the kind of information environment you need for democracy to flourish.”

Ash’s seven-point prescription to save democracy

Ash’s remedy is both pragmatic and urgent:

1. “Tough on populism, tough on the causes of populism.” Address the genuine economic and cultural neglect that feeds populist resentment rather than dismissing it.

2. Strengthen all pluralist, anti-majoritarian institutions.”The independence of the courts, the civil service, auditors, obviously the different houses of parliament, and so on and so forth. These are the things that are coming under attack now, for example, in Trump’s America, and have been eroded in countries like Hungary.”

3. Learn from success. “Poland, two years ago, was very close to going down the Hungarian path, to state capture, to the demolition step-by-step of liberal democracy, and they came back. How? By winning an election that was not wholly free and fair. More people turned out to vote than ever before. More young people than old. More women than men voted in that election.”

4. Rebuild the media environment. “If you have public service media worthy of the name, hang on to them for dear life, strengthen their editorial independence, and quadruple the budget.” Ash credits the BBC with helping Britain avoid America’s fate: “You in Ukraine have Suspilne. Hang on to it for dear life. Strengthen its editorial independence. Quadruple the budget.”

5. Keep looking for what people have in common. “You’re going to have this problem in Ukraine in the next few years when the hot phase of the war is over… there’s a big danger of all the tensions and divisions in Ukrainian society coming to the surface. So keep looking for the things that keep people together.”

6. Don’t try to out-populist the populists. “It never works. We know that. If you adopt the rhetoric of the populists, if you do the dog whistle to the populists, voters will say, why should I vote for the dog whistle when I can have the real dog? It only strengthens the Marine Le Pens and the AFDs and the Nigel Farages.”

7. Don’t collaborate, even in very small ways. Drawing on Václav Havel’s wisdom: “Every dictatorship, every authoritarian regime isn’t just built on force. It’s built on these thousands and millions of tiny individual acts of collaboration. So don’t collaborate, even in the smallest way.”

The Ukrainian test case: when optimism meets reality

Ash’s confidence in democracy’s resilience faces its ultimate test in Ukraine. While he speaks of democracy’s long-term victory, Ukrainian survival depends on short-term Western commitment—commitment that’s eroding as anti-democratic populists gain power across the democratic world.

The very democratic backsliding Ash diagnoses is producing leaders hostile to Ukrainian aid. In Poland, despite historical solidarity, anti-Ukrainian sentiment is rising among voters frustrated with economic pressures, culminating in the victory of Karol Nawrocki, who has questioned Ukraine’s EU and NATO aspirations.

Slovakia’s Robert Fico has explicitly cut aid and adopted a Russia-friendly stance.

Romania’s Călin Georgescu, a pro-Putin candidate who praised Russian values and opposed NATO support for Ukraine, won the first round of presidential elections before the vote was annulled due to Russian interference. His political ally George Simion then ran in the 2025 rerun and lost by just 7% in May 2025—meaning pro-Putin forces came within single digits of controlling a NATO country bordering Ukraine.

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In the United States, Donald Trump promises “peace deals” that would reward Russian aggression by forcing Ukraine to cede territory.

Ukrainian soldiers die defending democratic ideals while voters in those same democracies choose leaders who would abandon Ukraine to Putin’s sphere of influence—exactly what happened to Georgia after its 2008 war with Russia.

The brutal mathematics are stark. Ukraine’s European integration depends on sustained Western support, but the rise of anti-democratic populists—fueled by the very ailments Ash identifies—is putting that support in jeopardy. Hungary’s Viktor Orbán has already blocked EU aid packages. The Trump administration is raising suspicions of directly serving Putin’s interests. The recent Polish election of Nawrocki is sure to send shockwaves regarding supporting Ukraine through Europe.

If Ash is wrong about democracy’s resilience, if the current crisis represents not growing pains but terminal decline, Ukraine faces a choice starker than any since independence: submit to Russian domination or stand alone against an empire. No less than centuries of Ukraine’s national liberation struggle hang in the balance.

The historian’s gamble

Ash’s seven-point plan may be academically sound, and his historical perspective offers valuable long-term hope. But for Ukraine, the timeline of democratic recovery matters as much as its ultimate success. His prescription assumes democracies have the luxury of time to heal themselves—time Ukraine may not have as Western support wavers and Russian pressure intensifies.

The historian’s optimism about democracy’s eventual triumph rings hollow when Ukraine’s immediate survival depends on democracies that are currently failing his own diagnostic tests. While Ash speaks confidently about democracy being “on the winning team,” Ukrainian leaders must plan for the possibility that the team might forfeit the game before victory arrives.

For Ukraine, Timothy Garton Ash’s confidence isn’t just an academic question—it’s an existential gamble. If he’s right, Ukraine’s democratic aspirations will eventually be vindicated. If he’s wrong, they may not survive to see it.

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When JPMorgan assigned Ukrainian reconstruction 2-to-1 odds of failure, the world’s largest bank wasn’t just making a prediction about Ukraine’s future – it was essentially wagering against the same Ukrainian agency that has consistently defied institutional expectations.

The timing appears particularly significant. By 2025, Ukraine’s Western integration had gained substantial momentum: industrial partnerships employing 300,000 people, €326 billion in European defense spending including Ukraine, and institutional lock-in approaching irreversibility.

When an institution managing $3.2 trillion makes such assessments, they influence insurance rates, loan guarantees, and foreign direct investment that could determine outcomes.

This isn’t theoretical. In February 2022, Western predictions of Ukrainian collapse created reluctance to provide robust support—ex-Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba described how German officials looked at him as if he were “doomed.” This pessimism delayed crucial early assistance, contributing to territorial losses that stronger initial support might have prevented.

JPMorgan’s economic pessimism now threatens similar delays in reconstruction funding.

A documented pattern of misjudgment

The problem is that JPMorgan’s analysis repeats the same analytical errors that made Western institutions so wrong about Ukraine in 2022.

They consistently underestimated Ukrainian resilience while overestimating Russian strategic capabilities. The fundamental mistake is treating Ukraine as a passive object of great power competition rather than an actor shaping its own destiny.

When Russia launched its full-blown invasion in 2022, analysts assumed Ukraine would behave like a typical post-Soviet state—passive, corrupt, waiting for rescue, destined to fall while Russia captures the country in weeks.

Instead, Ukraine chose to fight, mobilize civil society, and transform its institutions while under bombardment.

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“Dudes with track pants and hunting rifles”: why Ukraine became the West’s most embarrassing blind spot

Just yesterday, Ukrainian forces demonstrated this agency again with coordinated drone strikes against Russian strategic bombers deep inside Russian territory—the kind of operation analysts thought impossible three years ago.

JPMorgan’s current prediction—that Russia has a 2-to-1 chance of dragging Ukraine back into its orbit—repeats this analytical blind spot about Russian durability while overlooking Ukrainian institutional momentum that has proven remarkably resilient under extreme pressure.

The bank’s track record on major predictions raises additional concerns.

When JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon predicted an economic “hurricane” in 2022 that never materialized, investors who followed his advice missed significant market gains. When the bank called Bitcoin a “fraud” in 2017 before eventually offering it to clients, the consequences were financial.

Now the stakes are higher—a country fighting for its survival depends on the investment flows their assessment could influence.

JPMorgan’s four-scenario framework

The bank divides Ukraine’s future into scenarios borrowed from other countries’ experiences: “South Korea” (15%), “Israel” (20%), “Georgia” (50%), and “Belarus” (15%).

The structure reveals their pessimism—negative scenarios representing 65% probability of Russian control versus just 35% for successful Western integration.

Their highest-probability Georgia scenario—reverting into the Kremlin’s orbit— draws on sophisticated analysis of institutional anchoring.

The economic mechanism they identify creates particular concern.

“Risk-averse investors could choose to avoid an unstable, security-fragile environment, limiting foreign direct investment.” High insurance costs and risk premiums could undermine competitiveness, while Ukraine might “re-open vulnerable trade corridors or informal dependencies linked to Russia.”

Their Belarus scenario (15% probability) demonstrates the extreme outcome—complete vassalization where Russia achieves its maximalist demands. The key insight connecting both scenarios: even strong pro-Western sentiment can fade “if not adequately reciprocated by Western institutions.”

Why Ukraine’s trajectory differs fundamentally

JPMorgan’s structural analysis has merit, but applying Georgia’s trajectory to Ukraine overlooks critical differences that make historical analogies misleading guides for political forecasting.

Consider the vulnerabilities that enabled Georgia’s drift:

• Economic dependence: Over 15% of GDP from Russian remittances by 2022-2023
• Limited scale: 3.7 million people, $30.5 billion GDP—manageable for sustained influence operations
• Oligarch capture: Bidzina Ivanishvili’s wealth enabled systematic institutional control
• Civil society erosion: Despite initial protests, “foreign agent” laws were ultimately implemented

Georgia’s Euromaidan moment

“Not another Russian colony”: Georgia erupts against Moscow’s shadow rule

Ukraine presents fundamentally different structural characteristics:

• Proven mobilization capacity at scale: Ukraine has sustained one million personnel under arms while maintaining government functionality under direct assault—institutional resilience tested at scales Georgia never faced.
• Economic decoupling track record: Unlike Georgia’s increasing Russian economic dependence, Ukraine systematically reduced Russian ties after 2014, creating fundamentally different vulnerability patterns.
• Civil society effectiveness: Belarus demonstrates complete Russian capture when civil society cannot mount sustained resistance. Georgia shows how gradual erosion can succeed despite protests—thousands demonstrated against “foreign agent” laws but ultimately failed to prevent implementation. Ukraine’s trajectory differs markedly: Euromaidan demonstrated not just mobilization capacity, but successful resistance that twice prevented governments from drifting toward Russian influence.

The critical difference: Ukraine has already withstood pressures that gradually captured Georgia and completely overwhelmed Belarus, but at much higher intensity and longer duration.

However, JPMorgan’s framework assumes Ukraine will eventually succumb to pressures it has already proven capable of resisting at levels that destroyed institutional resistance elsewhere in the post-Soviet space.

Institutional integration approaching irreversibility

JPMorgan’s scenarios assume current Western support could gradually fade, but examining actual commitments reveals integration approaching irreversibility. This isn’t potential future support being debated—it’s operational infrastructure already employing hundreds of thousands.

• Financial infrastructure creating permanent dependencies: The EU has delivered $158 billion with $54 billion more locked through 2027 for EU accession. $300 billion in frozen Russian assets generate ongoing funding streams—the first €1.5 billion tranche already disbursed with decades of payments planned.
• Industrial integration beyond reversal: Rheinmetall, KNDS, and Nammo have established production facilities in Ukraine. Approximately 500 arms producers now employ nearly 300,000 people. Every Western weapons system creates long-term dependency relationships through spare parts, training, and maintenance contracts.
• Growing military integration: Among Ukraine’s military deliveries from Western partners are 84 Multiple Launch Rocket Systems, 740 howitzers, 78 air defense systems, 939 tanks, and 1,271 armored personnel carriers. This hardware creates permanent dependency chains that lock in decades of partnership. Ukraine’s arms industry achieved 69% revenue growth to $2.2 billion in 2023—the fastest increase ever recorded.
• Security architecture: Twenty-nine Allies and partners have signed bilateral security agreements with Ukraine. The NATO-Ukraine Joint Analysis, Training and Education Centre has officially opened—an institutional integration that Georgia never achieved.

JPMorgan’s concern about Western fatigue deserves serious consideration—democratic societies do struggle with sustained commitments. But their model may underestimate how current integration creates constituencies for continued support.

Each arms factory employing local workers creates lobbying pressure for sustained partnerships. Each EU legal framework integrated into Ukrainian governance creates bureaucratic momentum. Each training program for Ukrainian personnel creates institutional relationships that transcend political cycles.

By 2008, Georgia had bilateral relationships; by 2025, Ukraine has multilateral institutional embedding that would require deliberate dismantling by dozens of countries simultaneously.

The replacement economy in action

JPMorgan assumes Russian economic pressure will eventually overcome Ukrainian resistance, but examining the underlying economic dynamics reveals a different trajectory emerging.

• Western economic integration with Ukraine is accelerating: According to SIPRI data, European defense spending increased 30% since 2021 to €326 billion—and this rearmament benefits Ukraine through weapons transfers and industrial partnerships, rather than excluding it from Europe’s defense ecosystem. Meanwhile, each round of sanctions against Russia creates permanent market displacement as Western competitors develop their own supply chains and lobbying influence, making reversal increasingly difficult.
• Russian economic sustainability appears increasingly strained: Russia’s military expenditure reached $149 billion in 2024—7.1% of GDP, the highest since the Cold War. This massive military spending comes at the expense of domestic priorities: just 0.87% of GDP goes to healthcare and 0.7% to education. Russia has forced banks to fund half its war costs, requiring businesses to borrow at punitive 21% interest rates that threaten long-term economic viability.
• The contrast in sustainability models is striking: While Ukraine allocates an even higher 34% of GDP to defense, it does so with massive external support that strengthens rather than weakens its economy. Russia burns through domestic resources alone, creating an unsustainable trajectory that favors Ukraine’s strategy of externally supported resistance over Russia’s self-funded pressure campaign.

What we’re witnessing is a managed demolition of Russian imperial pretensions with Ukraine as both the primary instrument and beneficiary. Every sector where Russia has been sanctioned gets permanently replaced by Western competitors who develop their own lobbying power and political influence.

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Why JPMorgan’s answer may be wrong

JPMorgan deserves credit for identifying a vulnerability that Western analysts often miss: states without firm institutional anchors can drift despite strong popular sentiment. Their insight about the relationship between security guarantees and economic confidence is particularly valuable.

The Georgia analogy captures an important dynamic—how gradual erosion can succeed where direct pressure fails. Their concern about Western fatigue over 5-10 years reflects a genuine understanding of how democratic attention spans work.

Where we disagree is not on the importance of institutional anchoring, but on whether Ukraine has already achieved sufficient integration to make drift unlikely.

Rather than whether Ukraine will drift into Russia’s orbit, the evidence suggests a different dynamic: Russia is the one under unsustainable pressure.

According to the fiscal data, Russia is burning through domestic resources at unprecedented rates while Ukraine builds permanent institutional ties with the West.

Each year of continued conflict accelerates Russia’s technological lag, demographic decline, and economic isolation while strengthening Ukraine’s Western integration.

Ukraine’s strategic orientation isn’t a future possibility being debated in scenario exercises—it’s an accomplished fact being implemented through billions in industrial infrastructure, EU legal frameworks integral to state functioning, and defense partnerships providing both security and economic opportunity.

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The real risk

The real risk is that JPMorgan’s assessment becomes reality through specific market mechanisms. Research shows that major financial institutions’ risk assessments create spillover effects on borrowing costs and investment decisions.

When the world’s largest bank assigns Ukrainian reconstruction coin-flip odds of success, that assessment influences concrete decisions: Lloyd’s of London adjusting insurance premiums for Ukrainian operations, development banks requiring higher risk assessments for reconstruction loans, and private equity firms avoiding Ukrainian partnerships despite profitable opportunities.

Financial institutions that bet against Ukrainian agency do so at their own peril. The institutional momentum is already substantial, the Russian pressure increasingly unsustainable. JPMorgan may find they’ve wagered $3.2 trillion in credibility against the same resilience that has already defied their expectations for three years.

The question isn’t whether Ukraine will follow Georgia’s path—it’s whether JPMorgan will recognize their analytical blind spot before their assessment becomes a self-defeating prophecy.