Nicole Bibbins Sedaca at the Bush Institute:
Vladimir Putin’s brutal, unprovoked, and unjustifiable invasion of Ukraine is an affront to the basic rights of the Ukrainian people and on democracy itself. But frighteningly, the ruthlessness behind the indiscriminate savagery in Bucha, Kharkiv, Mariupol, and elsewhere reverberates beyond Ukraine: The Kremlin’s war of aggression reflects a tide of authoritarianism that has been growing for many years and poses a dire threat to freedom around the world.
Following years of democratic expansion globally, the world is now facing its 16th consecutive year of democratic recession, as was reported by Freedom House’s most recent edition of Freedom in the World. This democratic recession means that there are more countries and territories in which freedoms are increasingly restricted than those in which freedom is expanding.