On December 3, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya took part in the Grand Continent Summit, speaking on the panel “How Democracy Thrives”.
The Grand Continent Summit is a closed forum in the Alps that brings together around two hundred experts and politicians. It is organized by the French publication Le Grand Continent under the patronage of French President Emmanuel Macron and Italian President Sergio Mattarella. This year’s participants included France’s Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs, Jean-Noël Barrot; Spain’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares; Croatia’s Prime Minister, Andrej Plenković; Georgia’s fifth President, Salome Zurabishvili; and others.
Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya spoke on the panel alongside the Secretary General of the Council of Europe, Alain Berset, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Oleksandra Matviichuk. She discussed why authoritarianism is strengthening and what European countries can do to prevent collapse on the eastern flank.
Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya: “Democracy is under attack across the world. This is not a random development but a carefully planned offensive by dictators. They share ideologies, technologies, and weapons. They use the same dirty tricks. Dictators claim that democracy threatens them. And it truly does – it threatens their illegitimate power.
Yesterday, Putin declared that he is ready to start a war against Europe at any moment. And he is not joking. Psychologically, Russians have never stopped fighting the West. They have been in a state of war ever since Putin came to power.
It is time to admit that in the 1990s, the West made a mistake in assuming Russia was a partner. As the chair of the Norwegian Helsinki Committee, Berit Lindeman, said: ‘We are selling Russia the rope on which it wants to hang us’.
For Europe, the eastern flank is not a ‘neighborhood problem,’ but the frontline of a global clash between democracy and dictatorship”.
