Devin Ackles

Ukraine’s president Petro Poroshenko is spending his fourth autumn in power against a background of protest — protests provoked by the president’s lack of desire to fulfill his own promises in the fight against corruption. Pressure from the street still isn’t enough to break the wall the authorities have built around themselves, but protests are provoking conflicts inside Ukraine’s ruling coalition, where the war against an external enemy is moving into a stage of internal conflict.

Russian anarchist writer Pyotr Ryabov was recently imprisoned and deported from Belarus. I asked him about freedom of assembly, the power of the hunger strike and why history lectures are a threat to authoritarian rule. RU The space for public discussion in Belarus is contracting. The news on 11 October that a Belarusian court had arrested Pyotr Ryabov, a Russian historian and member of the self-styled anarcho-communist alliance “Autonomous Action”.

Subverting the fight against corruption, whipping up patriotic publics and coopting the media and judiciary — this is the face of authoritarian drift in Ukraine. Eastern Europe has become a source of short- and long-term risks for the entire European continent. Inter-state conflicts, authoritarianism and illiberalism seem to permanently dwell here and increase the threats to democracy in other parts of Europe.