The Paul Wells Show - The tyrant next door: The struggle for democracy in Eastern Europe

Episode Date: December 7, 2022

This week, Paul has two conversations about the struggle for democracy in Eastern Europe, with people who are living through it. First, Janis Kazocins, national security advisor to the president of Latvia, talks about what lessons we can draw from the Baltic states to shed light on Ukraine, NATO and Russia. Next, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya talks about how she went from being an “ordinary housewife” to running as the pro-democracy candidate in the Belarusian election. Though there’s reason to believe she won, her opponent claimed victory and crushed dissent. Paul spoke to her onstage at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.

Next time you feel like complaining about the neighbors, imagine if the neighbor was Vladimir Putin. This week, two views on the struggle for democracy in Eastern Europe. We thought we were under the protective umbrella of NATO, and then came the cyber attack on Estonia in 2007, the invasion of Georgia in 2008. 2014 really did wake NATO up out of its slumbers. I'm Paul Wells. Welcome to The Paul Wells Show. Welcome to the Paul Wells Show. Every autumn, people who hope for peace and prepare for war gather in Halifax to ask themselves, what's the worst that could happen? Since the Halifax International Security Forum was founded in 2009, it's become an important annual gathering for defense ministers, senators,

army generals, scholars, and pund defense ministers, senators, army generals, scholars, and pundits. Of course, this year the main topic was Russia's invasion of Ukraine, but other countries have been invaded before. Others might be invaded again. Still others have had their democracy attacked from within. This week, following the latest Halifax Forum, I've got two interviews for you. One is with a British-born former officer in the Royal Army who serves as National Security Advisor to the President of Latvia, the tiny Baltic country where 700 Canadian soldiers have been leading a NATO Defence Force since 2017. There's a lot to defend. Until 1990, Latvia and its neighbours, Lithuania and Estonia, were part of the Soviet Union. I spoke with Janusz

Kazosyncz in Halifax. He talked about Latvia's history in NATO and what it teaches us about what might come next in Eastern Europe. Yanis Kazhocinch, thank you for joining me. My pleasure. Are you aware that people call you the Latvian James Bond? Well, that was when I got the job, which is now 19 years ago, and it was silly then, and it's even more silly now. I did spend 10 years running Latvia's external intelligence service,

but since then I have not been a practitioner in the intelligence business. When did you get that gig? And what sort of things does one learn in that seat? To the extent you can tell me? Well, I left the British Army in 2002 after 30 years because my last job was as UK defence advisor to the chief of defence in Bratislava in Slovakia. It was a super job because I had the next door office, I was involved in all the discussions and I had no responsibility. It's wonderful. But it occurred to me that this does not make sense, that I'm helping Slovakia to join NATO, when in fact I ought to be helping my own country.

So I left the British Army early, moved back permanently to Latvia in 2002, and worked with the then Prime Minister on anti-corruption issues. And at that point, we were finding it rather difficult to sort out the intelligence aspects, the requirements for joining NATO. And there was not the greatest degree of trust in the Latvian services. So in 2003, May 2003, I was appointed by Parliament to run the Constitution Protection Bureau, which was the external intelligence agency, and the National Security Authority that seemed to do the trick. Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, joined NATO and the European Union in 2004. Yeah.

So there's a decade and a half in there where there's a democratic economic transition. What was your sense of Latvia's place between Russia and the traditional Western Europe at that time? Was it a democracy was rolling eastward and would keep rolling into Russia? Or was there always a sense of Latvia as the front line between antagonistic notions of civilization? I would say very much the latter. Even the Russians themselves, I mean, proper Russians who had come into Latvia during the period of occupation, felt that they were going to the West. We were considered to be part of the West because we had been independent until 1940, when we were occupied as a result of the Hitler-Stalin pact. During that time, and even up until probably February of this year, we, the Baltic states in particular, were considered to be Russophobe

because we were saying, you have to watch out. The Russians have not changed, the leopard has not changed its spots. While Western European countries were countries which had empires, Russia is a country which is an empire and throughout its period it has expanded, sometimes been forced to contract and then try to expand again. Therefore, what Putin is doing now is not at all odd. And that's why having tried to be neutral in the interwar period found that that was absolutely hopeless and we were occupied. Nevertheless, even though we spent a huge amount of money from our national budget on defence,

we couldn't defend ourselves. We realised that our top priority was to join NATO for defence and the European Union for good governance. And they were the priorities. Getting into NATO was the most difficult thing of all. In the summer of 1997, less than seven years before we joined NATO, I asked my political boss in the Ministry of Defence in Whitehall, what do you think the chances are of the Baltic states getting into NATO? And he said, come on, Yanis, get real. In other words, he did not think there was any chance at all. And therefore, looking at how that panned out and looking at the situation with Ukraine, I think those who were saying, well, Ukraine, it'll take decades before they join, I think that could well be a great mistake. The question will be, how is Russia

going to change as a result of what is happening now and this gross, horrific miscalculation on the part of Putin and the Kremlin. In 1993-94, the Latvian army is essentially a Soviet army. And in 2004, and especially since then, it's a NATO army. How does that, what does that change entail? Well, it wasn't really a Soviet army, because unlike the satellite countries, which had Sovietized national armies, we didn't have anything. And when the Russians withdrew, they demolished as much as they could, left us with as little as possible. Therefore, we were really building things up from scratch. One of the ways in which we did it was to try to get Western assistance, and the way that that worked best was in particular for the Baltic Battalion. The Baltic Peacekeeping Battalion was meant for peacekeeping duties, therefore it wasn't anti-Russian,

therefore the Russians couldn't complain. But it was a way in which we could get Western training, Western equipment in Western doctrine, joint doctrine, joint training. The problem was that this was not considered quite as important the moment we were invited to join NATO, Quite as important the moment we were invited to join NATO, because then we all breathed a big collective sigh of relief and started thinking about what is most useful for my country. Maybe we'll do a deal with the Finns or we'll go and buy something over there

or take some free kit from the Swedes. And we started to drift in different directions. And that is a great shame, because we thought we were under the protective umbrella of NATO, and nobody would be a serious threat to us again. And then came the cyber attack on Estonia in 2007, the invasion of Georgia in 2008, which was a wake-up call, but nobody answered the alarm. 2014 really did wake NATO up out of its slumbers. And then 2022, now we see that there really, really is a threat, and we have to take it very seriously. There are voices in the West, you've heard them, who say that all of those incidents from 2007 on were evidence that NATO overreached in moving into regions that the Russians considered part of their sphere of influence. What would you say to that line of

argument? Russia claims, as you indicated, that NATO is responsible for its actions. But Russia knows and understands very well that NATO is a defensive alliance and that NATO, under no circumstances that one can imagine, is going to get consensus of 30, soon to be 32, countries to attack Russia. It's just not going to happen. We're not that sort of alliance. But the European Union, that is a completely different thing altogether, because the European Union, with its example of good governance, democracy, rule of law, and human rights, rule of law and human rights is a direct challenge to Putinism. It's an existential challenge. Therefore, a successful democratic Ukraine, which Putin claims to be part of greater Russia, is the most dangerous thing that there could possibly be. Because if Ukraine can succeed and people can feel free in Ukraine and exercise these freedoms,

then, of course, the other part of the Russian nation, as he sees it, over the border in Russia, might start wondering why they can't live this sort of normal life. And, of course, they would like't live this sort of normal life. And of course they would like to live this sort of normal life. That is why our Russians, even though in their hearts they feel a link to the country from which they or their parents originated, they have no desire to go and live in Russia. They want to continue to live in a free Europe, in a free Latvia. And that is what the Maidan was all about. The European Union is an existential threat to Putinism. That's why he has had to fight what we consider to be a senseless war.

But if you look at it from this point of view, you can understand why he took that sort of decision. So the Maidan revolution in 2014 is essentially a democratic virus in what Putin would consider the Russian system. Well, I think it goes back before that, because Yanukovych was clearly not. Yushchenko, as president, was was a democratic president and this was the colored revolution a decade earlier. Maidan was a reaction to retrenchment and the decision by Yanukovych, President Yanukovych, not to go towards the European Union, but to stick with ties with an increasingly autocratic Russia. And that's what the Ukrainian nation did not want to have. They want freedom. They do not want to

live in the way that Vladimir Putin wants them to live. So President Biden has said many times that America won't be dragged into Putin's war of choice, but that America and its allies will defend every inch of NATO territory. That's a reference to the Baltics. And your worry is that Putin might put that to a concrete test to see whether NATO actually intends to defend Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania? Well, the concern would be what is going to happen to Putin anyway, because if we now have Kadyrov and Prigozhin, that is Kadyrov, who is the president of Chechnya, that is Kadyrov who is the president of Chechnya and Prigozhin who is the man who controls the largest of the private armies the Wagner group openly criticizing the president Putin then one wonders what sort of maneuvering is taking place in Russia for the removal of the current president, who clearly has not done terribly well as a strategic genius in Ukraine, and replacing him with somebody who is going to

do better. And therefore, what comes after Putin may well be worse worse the only good side of this is that whatever comes after putin if it is worse it is unlikely to last very long because putin has spent two decades building up his power base his power vertical and if that starts to wobble it it is already wobbling, if it falls, then somebody else picking up the pieces and trying to put it all together easily in those sort of circumstances, particularly with a failed war and sanctions from the West, would find it extremely difficult. That may help explain one of the things that I'm noticing here in Halifax this weekend, which is a sort of a grim optimism. There's a sense that he's taken his shot and it's

horrible effect, but that it's possible to see the other side of this conflict, and it's a scenario of Russian defeat, not simply Russian negotiation or Russian recidivism, but Russian defeat. were to be pushed now into negotiation at a time when they've had two very great successes, Kharkiv and Kherson, that the Russians are in much better defensive positions, that they have shown that they haven't fallen apart. And Suverikin can as a command that knows what he's doing because withdrawing something in the order of 20 to 30 000 troops across such a big river as dnepr under ukrainian assault and high mars activity and doing it successfully without leaving huge amounts of useful kit behind and people behind that is a very professional operation and one of the most difficult operations in war that means we need to be very very careful about well we the ukrainians need to be very very careful about, well, we, the Ukrainians, need to be very, very careful about what they do next. And what they will try to do is to maintain the momentum

to continue to push, because if Russia is able to have a ceasefire, then they will consolidate. Putin will declare this as a victory because he's got more territory than he had before February the 24th. He will rearm and we know damn certain that he will have another go for the sort of reasons that I outlined before because Ukraine is a fundamental threat to Putinism. Therefore there will not be a lasting peace. There cannot be a lasting peace,

particularly if the principles of the United Nations Charter have not been followed. Therefore, we have got to help Ukraine through to the bitter end. Now, the Ukrainians are prepared to do that. And I think Russia has some very serious issues. Let me give you one example. The Russians have used, during the Second World War, and have tried to use now with their mobilized forces, mass, and mass has a quality all of its own if you have lots of it, if you have lots of cannon fodder. all of its own if you have lots of it, if you have lots of cannon fodder. Now, the average age of the Soviet Union population at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War,

as far as I've been able to find, is something a little over 20 years old. Not because all the old codgers had died off or been sent to the Gulag, but because they had very large six, eight children families. The average age of Russians on the 24th of February of this year was 39.4. They do not have cannon fodder. And therefore, starting this process of mobilization and putting Russian young people in the firing line to be killed, this is not going to end well for the Kremlin. Joe Biden at the beginning of this said,

and then had to apologize for saying, that Putin can't stay in power. It sounds like you're saying that wasn't the expression of a policy, but it was simply a recognition of the way this has to work out. That's exactly right. I don't think that the people around Putin are as taken with him as they were before. It used to be the good Tsar and the bad boyars, the classic Russian way of explaining away difficulties. That is no longer the case. This is Putin's war. I think that's a good place to wrap it up. Thank you for joining me.

My pleasure. After the break, I'll talk to the last minute candidate who probably won the presidential election in Belarus, and who's still rallying the world in support of freedom in her country. I want to take a moment to thank all of our partners, the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, the National Arts Centre, our founding sponsor, TELUS, our title sponsor, Compass Rose, and our publishing partners, the Toronto Star and iPolitics. If you went in a straight line from Latvia to Ukraine, you'd go through Belarus,

a landlocked country of 9 million people. A thug named Alexander Lukashenko became the first elected president of Belarus in 1994, and he refuses to leave. Successive elections have been increasingly brutal mockeries of democracy. In 2020, a YouTuber named Sergei Tsikhanouski became famous by driving around the country asking ordinary Belarusians about their lives. He announced he would run against Lukashenko, and he was immediately arrested. So his wife, Svetlana Tsikhanouskaya, ran instead. And there's good reason to believe she won the election. But Lukashenko declared victory, brutally repressed dissent with massive police violence. Tsikhanouskaya fled Belarus, but she won't stop campaigning for democracy. Tsikhanouskaya was at Halifax,

but I met her a couple of days later in Ottawa. I interviewed her on stage at the invitation of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, an Ottawa think tank that stands up for democracy around the world. I found her story and her quiet dignity deeply moving. Madam Sykhanovskaya, thank you for taking your time and welcome to Ottawa. It's a pleasure and an honour to have you with us. Let's begin by asking you about the events of the first part of 2020. What you expected the year would be like and what it turned out to be like. Personally, you know, my life has turned upside down because I have never had political ambitions.

I was ordinary, as Lukashenko called me, housewife. That's true. I was bringing up two wonderful children, and it was my husband who decided to start communicating with people, just asking them simple questions. What is your life? How do you live in Belarus? What do you think about corruption? What do you think about our political systems? And, you know, when I decided to run instead of him, just for love to him, you know, I didn't know what I'm going to endure, you know, through all these months.

But it was my decision. And when I saw thousands of people on the streets, when I saw how people are supporting each other, how people were becoming more and more vocal about the situation, I didn't have other choice but to stay together with people and continue my fight. And after foreign elections, hundreds of thousands of people went to the streets to defend their choice.

And they were brutally repressed by Lukashenko's regime. For the first three days after 9th of August 2020, thousands of Belarusian men have been detained. They were brutally beaten, their bodies were blue, and women stood instead of them. They started new marches, beautiful women in white clothes. They wanted to show that our revolution is peaceful. We don't want any violence from our side. We want really, you know, to be stick to the rule of law. We want free and fair elections and nothing more. We don't want revenge to Lukashenko whatsoever.

And I had to flee Belarus, but I didn't give up. And I continued to do what I could in this situation. I was absolutely an experienced person. I didn't know anything about politics. I started to meet with the presidents and prime ministers, and I was just studied from them you know how to communicate how to I had to to learn a lot about protocol and all this stuff it's rather difficult you had to learn a lot about different organizations European Council, Council of Europe, UN all the

structures and it was you know it was a big job i have to say i'm still learning actually but i saw how people were continuing to fight let's stay in 2020 for a minute what was it like to campaign in the extraordinary circumstances of like of day-to-day life in belarus how did you how did you carry out your campaign and did you think you could have a victory that would be recognized by the authorities? Or was that never a possibility? Okay, let's start from the beginning. There were three candidates who were really real opposing Lukashenko. And when we understood that I was the only person who was registered in the Central Action Commission,

we decided to unite our efforts, to unite people who were dedicated to one or that candidate. And it was such a good sign for Bill Wilson that we really can work together, that we can really unite our efforts. And many IT companies helped in our election campaign. They developed a system of alternative counting, with which we had the opportunity to prove that the elections were fraudulent. We were communicating with people, asking them to be observers on the polling stations and just to count who is voting against Lukashenko or for Lukashenko. Also, we had a very simple sign that a person is opposing Lukashenko.

We wear white bracelets, and it means that who is coming to a station, Poland station with white bracelet, it means that, you know, he's opposing Lukashenko and people just were counting. And when in the evening of the 9th of August, some Poland stations showed real protocols where Lukashenko lost, it was like such an inspiration for the Russian people. We had the opportunity to prove with the alternative election that Lukashenko is lost. And people wanted to oppose this decision of Central Election Commission to declare Lukashenko as president.

And they went out to rallies. Our political program was simple. No, I didn't promote my ideas or ideas of my husband we demanded that after these elections where I was like a symbol or alternative like candidate I I was like a symbol or alternative like candidate. I promised to people that I'm not going to participate in new elections. My task is to organize new free and fair elections, early elections, where they can choose their candidate after all political prisoners at that

moment are released. So it was rather simple, understandable for people. And that's why people also joined, people united, you know, to oppose Lukashenko's regime. So you were the candidate of a democratic transition that would follow. Yeah, that's right. Okay. So the election is held. Independent observers say that you are the winner, and yet you have to flee the country.

and yet you have to flee the country. And very large pro-democracy protests are crushed by the regime. And President Lukashenko starts doing the most extraordinary things, diverting civilian aircraft to land them outside Minsk so that he can have dissidents arrested, weaponizing refugees in his conflict with the European Union. Tell me a little bit about what Lukashenko has been up to recently so that we can better understand the nature of his threat to democracy. So first of all, he's not president. Don't call him president of Belarus. Thank you for correcting me. You know, the only thing that Lukashenko managed to build in our country is his vertical power. You know, since 1994, when he became first-time president, he dismissed parliament. He ruined institutions of power.

He ruined the court system in our country. Then his political opponents started to disappear. They were killed. And year after year, he seeds the sense of fear among society. And people really thought, what can I do in this dictatorship regime? Nothing. So everybody hid in his shell, living in his small world, not thinking about Belarus, about democratic institutions and so on. Of course, there were always groups of people who were standing for democratic changes. After each election, we had political prisoners in our country. But in the massive, people didn't think about this. You know, they lived with their own lives.

And Lukashenko, all these 20 years, felt impunity. He never saw strong reaction from Western countries on his actions. Every time after elections, sanctions have been imposed, then he traded political prisoners, and he exchanged the release of them to lifting of sanctions. It was like year after year. And the same happened in 2020. He was sure that the Western countries will,

after some time, will start talking to him. He will sell political prisoners and so on. He didn't feel the mood of people. He didn't feel intention of people that this time is different. And when we managed also, you know, to build coalition of democratic countries who are supporting our democratic movement and nobody wanted to talk to him, but still no strong measures have been taken. The first sanctions after such awful human rights abuses in our country, after awful tortures in jails, first sanctions that have been

imposed included only about 80 persons, 80 people. That's it. And of course Lukashenko felt impunity and he decided to punish the West. When he landed airplane, you know, and he was sure that nothing could happen after this. And I'm so grateful that democratic countries, our allies united and first wrong sanctions have been imposed after this, after Lukashenko became a threat not only to the nation, but also to international security. Then he decided to punish the world with orchestrated migration crisis. And again, European Union and the USA and Canada stayed united and didn't start communicating to him, trying to resolve this crisis.

They managed to do it themselves. And now Lukashenko, you know, he understands that he's trapped because he acts as if thousands of people are still staying in front of his palace. He has to use violence, tortures, intimidations every day to prove his strength, you know, in Belarus. If he managed to suppress people, he wouldn't need, you know, to detain people every day. But now he knows that he didn't manage to turn this page of our history, that his crimes are not forbidden, are not forgotten by Belarusian people. And he tries to strengthen even his military institutions, you know, to escape people. But I really see how democratic society countries

who are so far away from Belarus, they continue to support us. You say that in the last year, two years, you've met many democratic leaders and heads of government, and they've given you a lot of advice. What's the best advice you've gotten? and so on. There was one person who told me, since you became a politician, you are going to be lonely, despite that you are surrounded with people. You know, everybody wants to talk to you, to shake hands, but you will feel such loneliness. And this is true. You know, you're always like afraid to communicate to people because they can be KGB agents. You know, you find peace only around your family. I have my children with myself. So this was, at that moment, I didn't realize what he's talking about. But then, you know, I felt this. But the main message was, don't stop and we will assist you. And now let me turn the question around.

Is there a lesson that Western leaders are sometimes too slow to learn that you wish that they would take more seriously? You know, back in 2020, I realized that we Belarusians had to rediscover Belarus to the world. Because for many, many years, Belarus was perceived as an appendix to Russia, you know, as part of Russia. And maybe because of this, you know, the critic politicians thought that this time is the same as the previous ones, you know. In a couple of months, you know, everything will be sil, and we will, as I said, trade with political prisons and so on.

They didn't, maybe at the beginning, didn't understand that this time is different. We Belarusians saw everyday detentions, everyday tortures. I didn't understand why the decisions are made so slowly about Belarus. It's so evident. Where is evil, what is good. So it's your main tool, you know, to create pressure on the regime through sanctions, through political pressure. And your decisions were sometimes so slow.

But again, I am really grateful for all the assistance, political assistance and financial assistance Belarusian civil society is getting. And so I don't want to blame anybody. I don't want to complain, you know, just doing our part of job. You and I were both in Halifax this weekend at the Halifax International Security Forum.

Three days of intense discussions with military and political leaders from around the world, American Defense Secretary, Canadian Defense Minister, a video message from President Zelensky in Ukraine. What observations do you have about the weekend in Halifax and the current state of the struggle for democracy? I'm glad that the world is united around these democratic values, around rule of law, and so on and so forth. But I have to say that Belarus is part of this regional crisis in Europe, and we don't want Belarus to be overlooked in this crisis. Now I see that all the attention is focused on Ukraine. We fully support this.

I'm sure that all the world has to support Ukrainians in this moment because they are not fighting only for liberation of their land. They are fighting against the cruelest dictatorship machine, like the imperialistic ambition of Russia. But I don't want Belarus to be forgotten as well. And sometimes, you know, it's very important to remind that Belarusian regime who are participating in this war and Belarusian people who are opposing the war, it's like two different things. When you think that Belarus is a collaborant in this war, don't think about like nation. Speak about dictatorship, Lukashenko's regime.

And also don't put Belarus and Russia in one basket. Today I saw the poll where it's written that 75% of Russians are supporting the war in Ukraine. In Belarus it's absolutely vice versa. 86% of Belarusians are against participation of Belarus in this war. And you will never see this V or Z signs on the streets of our cities. So we are not Russia. We want to be the part of European family of countries. Just understand, while Lukashenko is in power, he will always fulfill demands of Putin or requests of Putin.

He will obey his puppet of Putin's regime. The presence of Lukashenko in our country will create constant threats to Ukraine, to our neighbors. So don't forget about Belarus. Have you spoken to your husband since his arrest? Don't forget about Belarus. Have you spoken to your husband since his arrest? My husband was arrested on the 29th of May, 2020. And since then, I had opportunity to speak with him only once on the phone. I don't know why KGB allowed him or forced him to call me.

It was 10 minutes conversation about children, about, you know, he didn't have opportunity to talk a lot, so I told him, you know, what we are doing, that we are fighting for release of political prisoners, and it was in October 2020. But now we can get information about political prisoners only from the lawyers who visit them and write letters. So people in prisons who are political prisoners are actually in awful conditions. They are treated much worse than ordinary criminals. And the people are marked with special like yellow labels meaning that they are political and nobody can communicate to them they have to be humiliated physically

and morally by administration of jail so this is the attitude. Svetlana Tsikhanouskaya thank you for your time thank you for your message thank you for your inspiring example and for reminding us of the work that we all have to do as citizens in free societies. Thanks to our hosts at the Macdonald Laurier Institute for making so many conversations like this possible. Have a very good day. Thank you. The American writer Stanley Crouch used to say that in a democracy, you never know who the messenger will be. He meant that free people aren't cut out for rule by blood or caste, that leadership's earned,

and that in the right circumstances, anyone can look or sound like a leader. In Canada, most of us have the luxury of not having to think about this sort of thing very often. My two guests this week live closer to danger, and each in their own way, they've had to step up. We have a lot to learn from their example. The Paul Wells Show is produced by Antica, in partnership with the National Arts Centre and the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. It's published by the Toronto Star and iPolitics. Thanks to our founding sponsor, TELUS, and our title sponsor, Compass Rose. Thank you. We'll be back next Wednesday.