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The article explores how autocratic regimes like China and Russia are collaborating with groups such as MAGA Republicans to undermine liberalism and freedom globally. It discusses the tactics used by these regimes, including controlling media outlets, spreading false information, and cooperating with other autocratic governments. The article also highlights the presence of information laundromats that spread propaganda on behalf of foreign actors, as well as the role of local actors in spreading anti-democratic content. It emphasizes the need for increased awareness and collaboration to counter these information operations. [Extracted from the article]

The article presents a speech by Anne Applebaum, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, delivered at the 11th Global Assembly of the World Movement for Democracy in Taipei, Taiwan, on October 25, 2022. It mentions that autocracies are run by sophisticated networks composed of kleptocratic financial structures; security services, including military, police, and paramilitary groups; and professional propagandists.

Anne Applebaum, historian and journalist 'A system with an emphasis on individual rights and open, competitive markets--the very basis of US strengths--faces existential questions in an age of big data [...]

The Russian military seized the airport in the first month of the invasion, but the Ukrainians took it back in November. gl GLO:161i/01jun23:20n1.jpg PHOTO (BLACK & WHITE): A Ukrainian soldier reassembles batteries extracted from downed Russian drones in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, which Vladimir Putin has tried to annex for Russia, March 9, 2023. gl GLO:161i/01jun23:22n1.jpg PHOTO (BLACK & WHITE): This page: A mass burial site in Izium, Ukraine, March 15, 2023. In a bid to restore Potemkin's cities to Russian suzerainty, Russia occupied Kherson in early March of 2022, at the outset of a campaign to annihilate both Ukraine and the idea of Ukraine. Will the regime be forced to focus on its internal problems, meaning that the potential for external aggressive policies will decline?" Only one thing matters: Russia's leaders must conclude that the war was a mistake, and Russia must acknowledge Ukraine as an independent country with the right to exist. To Vladimir Putin in particular, Potemkin is the Russian nationalist who subdued territory now impudently and illegitimately claimed by Ukraine, a nation that Putin believes does not exist. [Extracted from the article]

IN THE SUMMER of 1985, I spent two months in the city that used to be called Leningrad. Along with several dozen other American college students, I stayed in a [...]

THAT IDEA - that there could be a different Russia, a Russia that is a nation-state and not an empire - does not carry much weight in Ukraine right now. The people who have it will not want to lose it, and the next government of Russia might well be even more repressive than the one that runs Russia now. Maybe this group needs a new name - they are not "Russian liberals", but "anti-empire Russians" or "pro-democracy Russians" or "pro-freedom Russians.". [Extracted from the article]

After all, if the Russian leader wants to reunite Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine into some kind of neo-Soviet empire, Lukashenko's loyalty is a necessary ingredient. We didn't finish our revolution, we didn't remove Lukashenko, we didn't prevent Russian troops from crossing our border to attack Ukraine - all of these are reasons, now, to fight in Ukraine. After Russia invaded Ukraine, K was racked with guilt, unable to sleep, angry that the failure of the Belarusian revolution meant that Russian rockets could be launched at Ukraine from Belarus. Feature No revolutionary posters line the streets, "flaming from the walls in clean reds and blues", as they did when George Orwell left Barcelona to fight in the Spanish Civil War. [Extracted from the article]

In Russian propaganda, Ukraine is a fake country, one without history or legitimacy, a place that is, in the words of Putin himself, nothing more than the "southwest" of Russia, an inalienable part of Russia's "history, culture and spiritual space." Dispatches In the terrible winter of 1932-33, brigades of Communist Party activists went house to house in the Ukrainian countryside, looking for food. In Russian propaganda, Ukraine is a fake country, one without history or legitimacy, a place that is, in the words of Putin himself, nothing more than the "southwest" of Russia, an inalienable part of Russia's "history, culture and spiritual space." In Russian propaganda, Ukraine is a fake country, one without history or legitimacy, a place that is, in the words of Putin himself, nothing more than the "southwest" of Russia, an inalienable part of Russia's "history, culture and spiritual space.". [Extracted from the article]

Dispatches In February 1994, in the grand ballroom of the town hall in Hamburg, Germany, the president of Estonia gave a remarkable speech. But Meri had also come to deliver a warning: Freedom in Estonia, and in Europe, could soon be under threat. Russian President Boris Yeltsin and the circles around him were returning to the language of imperialism, speaking of Russia as primus inter pares - the first among equals - in the former Soviet empire. But as long as Russia is ruled by Putin, then Russia is at war with us too. [Extracted from the article]

STALIN: VOLUME 1: PARADOXES OF POWER, 1878-1928 STEPHEN KOTKIN Penguin How did stalin become stalin? Or, to put it more precisely: How did Iosif Vissarionovich Djugashvili--the grandson of serfs, the […]

Civil society and individual liberty is on rise in post-communist Europe. Independent organizations are still looked with suspicion, more so in Russia than Poland and threats to freedom still exist to some extent in Central and Eastern Europe.