Cosying Up to Autocrats Is Killing Democracy
Europe is sleepwalking through a war on democracy, cosying up to autocrats while Kremlin propaganda poisons elections and Brussels mutters empty promises.
Europe’s Dangerous Slumber: On the Manufacture of Falsehoods, the Cosying to Autocrats, and the Cost of Complacency.
A digital forgery, branded with the digital red ink of “FAUX,” has made its rounds across Telegram and Twitter. The image purports to be a statement from Telegram founder Pavel Durov, accusing a “Western European government” thinly veiled as France, of seeking to silence conservative voices in Romania’s recent elections. The claim is both dangerous and absurd, for it not only maligns a democratic partner, but also serves as an open conduit for Russian-style disinformation campaigns that are actively corroding the European project from within.
France, rightly, has responded1 with clarity and vigour. In an official statement disseminated across its diplomatic channels, it denounces the claim as “completely unfounded,” drawing attention instead to the real malign actor in the room: Russia. The French Foreign Ministry points to confirmed reports of digital and financial interference, of algorithmic tampering and troll campaigns directed by Kremlin-linked entities, which led to the annulment of the first round of the Romanian presidential elections.
This is no longer a case of abstract democratic backsliding or passive geopolitical erosion. It is now an active front in an information war that Europe continues to meet with bureaucratic frowns and lukewarm statements. The Kremlin is not testing Europe’s resolve. It is demonstrating Europe’s lack of it.
Where is the European Union in all of this? Where are the mechanisms that were meant to guard the bloc against precisely this kind of interference? For years now, Brussels has sleepwalked through signs of Russian penetration, political, digital, and financial into the Union's weakest seams. There has been no shortage of summits, press releases, and warnings. But democracy does not defend itself with press conferences. It needs guardians, not just in speech, but in structure, in spine, and in sustained political will.
What we are witnessing is the European equivalent of waiting for the fire alarm to sound while the flames already lick the doors. Democracy, when corrupted from within and attacked from without, does not collapse with a bang, but with a shrug. And the European shrug, made up of deference, diplomatic ambiguity, and expediency is proving to be its own form of capitulation.
Even more troubling is Europe’s flirtation with autocrats dressed in democratic drag. This past week, nearly every European leader flocked to Tirana, effectively legitimising Edi Rama, a man whose decade-long governance of Albania has opened the gates to narco-cartels and institutional rot2. Rama has wrapped himself in anti-Kremlin rhetoric, and for that, Brussels seems willing to forgive the rest. It is a damning indictment of the continent’s priorities that rhetorical opposition to Moscow now grants a license to rule with impunity.
Have we learned nothing? Have we not seen how autocrats, once coddled and empowered, do not stop at home? They metastasise. They network. They infect the democratic bloodstream of the Union itself.
Criminals and kleptocrats should not be afforded stages in European capitals. They should not be toasted at diplomatic dinners or hailed for stability while they steal elections and poison their institutions. Europe cannot afford to endorse the enemies of freedom in the hope that they are the lesser evil. Evil is not a matter of relativity. It is a matter of action.
We must reject the Faustian bargains being struck in corners of the continent. Brussels, Paris, Berlin, and London must draw hard lines against corruption, against criminal governance, against those who manipulate our openness for their own entrenchment. Shouting when the damage is done, when the elections are rigged, the courts compromised, the press stifled, is not governance. It is theatre.
European institutions were not created to perform. They were created to protect.
Let this episode serve as a brutal reminder: Russia’s interference is real. The danger is present. But the deeper threat may be Europe’s inertia. We cannot tweet our way out of this. We cannot wish it away with summits. The time for shouting has passed. Now is the time to act.
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From Tirana to Belgrade: The Criminal Cartography of a Collapsing Region
TIRANA, Albania — Beneath the diplomatic sheen of summits and handshakes, a darker narrative is taking root in the Western Balkans, one where crime and politics have woven themselves into a potent alliance, threatening the very fabric of European security. This is not mere conjecture. It is the result of a two-year-long investigative effort, the findings of which were recently discussed in a searing interview by