Democratic governance in Central Europe and Central Asia declined for a 20th consecutive year, according to rights watchdog Freedom House, driven by Moscow's full-scale invasion of Ukraine and Azerbaijan's "military conquest" of Nagorno-Karabakh.
In a report released on April 11, the Washington-based group said that of 29 "nations in transit" -- a grouping comprised of former Soviet and Warsaw Pact nations -- 10 saw a decline in their democracy scores in 2023, while only five improved over the previous year.
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The report singled out Russia and Azerbaijan for their "wars of aggression," calling them the two "most glaring examples of the disdain that today’s autocrats hold for fundamental human rights and pluralist societies."
“Authoritarian regimes are stepping up their attacks and undermining democratic governance across the region,” said Michael J. Abramowitz, president of Freedom House.
“In Ukraine and Nagorno-Karabakh, we’ve already seen the devastating consequences of authoritarian expansion, and there’s no reason to believe it will stop there. Unless democracies act urgently and consistently to uphold their own interests and values, more territory will be lost to dictatorship and repression,” he added.
Russia launched its ongoing full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, while Azerbaijan launched a lightning offensive in September 2023 that ended with Baku regaining control over the breakaway region of Nagorno-Karabakh that for three decades had been under ethnic Armenian control.
The report said the countries with the lowest "democracy scores" among the 29 nations were Turkmenistan (1.00), Tajikistan (1.04), Azerbaijan (1.07), and Russia (1.07).
Serbia posted the largest decline in its score among the nations, falling to 3.61 from 3.79. The lower the score, the lower the level of democracy in a country.
"[Serbia's] decline was the result of fraudulent elections, state capture of the media, the weakening authority of municipal governments, and years of waning judicial independence," Freedom House said.
One of the few bright spots in the report was Ukraine.
Freedom House said that gains in the country resulted from the government’s progress in building up judicial and anti-corruption institutions and actively investigating graft, including in the military. Ukraine's score rose to 3.43 from 3.36.
It added that in order to ensure that "Ukraine wins on Ukraine’s terms," governments must sustain and increase "much-needed" military, humanitarian, and budgetary aid to the country while also seizing and repurposing frozen Russian assets to facilitate Ukraine’s reconstruction and support its efforts to build a "durable democracy."
“The fate of European democracy now depends in large part on the willingness of democratic states to adopt a more active approach to security in the region, most urgently by supporting Ukraine,” said Mike Smeltzer, the report's co-author and senior research analyst for Europe and Eurasia.
“Any failure to stand up for democracy during this critical moment will make it more costly to check authoritarian expansion in the future, both in the region and around the world. The United States and Europe must act now to ensure the defeat of Moscow’s invasion and to protect democratic institutions and norms more broadly,” he added.
The report said the countries with the highest "democracy scores" were Estonia (6.00), Latvia (5.79), and Slovenia (5.79).