Remarks by Danylo Lubkivsky,

Director of the Kyiv Security Forum, 

at Ukraine-NATO Interparliamentary Council held at the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine 

June 25, 2024

Thank you for the opportunity to address Ukraine-NATO Interpaliamentary Council, sponsored by the NATO Parliamentary Assembly. Today’s gathering is important for Ukraine, especially in the context of the upcoming NATO Summit in Washington.

Among other things, it emphasizes one more significant point - the value of a full-fledged parliamentary diplomacy, which plays a fundamental and independent role in any real democracy.

Neither military circumstances, political calculations, nor partisan censorship can limit such activities. It’s an important reminder here, at the war-time Ukrainian parliament.

Why Russia considers a democratic European Ukraine a threat?

This is the subject line suggested for me to deliberate at our meeting.
Here in Kyiv, in the capital city of Ukraine, the country that for ten years already remains under a direct military aggression of Russia, I would expand this issue.

Why is Russia afraid of democracy in principle?

Modern Russia is known as a proxy of statehood with all power and control seized and held, for decades on, by a gang of criminals representing a cross-breed of special security services and mafia formations.

Refurbished imperial Russian façade disguises a militant gang of bandits with phenomenal appetites.

However, the actual situation is much more complex than the simple fact of power grab by the once criminal gang turning into war criminals.

According to the experts, back in 2012 there were 39 million old-age pensioners and 18 million veterans in Russia. These people make up the lion’s share of the core voting power in Russia, directly or indirectly shaping political sentiments in that country. They are also ready to obey the imposed doctrines.

Such a colossal mass of people is characterized by limited life opportunities and social dependence, in a word – by misery.

The dominant mood of such people includes resentment, revenge-seeking and reinstating Russia’s might the way their morbid imagination suggests.

All these people represent the collective Putin.

They sought his emergence.

They constitute the basis of his regime.

Naturally, they are not alone.  Over two decades of Putin’s illegal power grab, generations failing to imagine their life without such a ruler and his regime have grown and matured in Russia.

It is they who constitute the silent core of a compromise serving the foundation for the current Russian system.

It is also worthwhile to recollect the cementing nature of the Russian Orthodox Church that has become one of the Putin’s regime pillars. These so-called clergymen are no less criminal than the regime itself. Their conscious, cynical, and anti-human support of the war against Ukraine cannot fail to impress any sane person.  

At the same time, Russian opposition has collapsed and found itself not only beyond any political developments, but beyond their own borders. 

Russia and its society have betrayed their democracy.

In the national and democratic sense, Russia is a vivid example of not only a failed state, but also a fake state.

The desire to restore its empire and assert its vain pomp is just the flip side of a deep and crippling sense of fear.

Russian fear is manifest through its historic inability to assert effective governance of its own lands.

This fear means mistrust of and despair in personal agency.

It is a total and complete disbelief in a nation’s ability to form an equal and just civil society.

For Putin’s regime, a feeling of fear is the chief engine of tactical and strategic plans. Any new atrocity exceeds combined results of the previous ones.

It was fear that constituted the Kremlin’s response to a different reality and alternative represented by two Ukrainian revolutions – the Orange Revolution of 2004 and the Revolution of Dignity of 2014.

Naturally, Moscow was scared of any prospect of Ukraine offering a brand new and ambitious model of successful development.

Another type of fear was manifest here: sickened existential horror of losing control over the Russian state.  

It is not solely Ukrainian democracy that is perceived by Russia as a threat, but the very fact of Ukrainian independence, sovereignty and freedom, the very fact of our statehood.

Russia fears the Ukrainian state, and this is one of the chief reasons for this horrid genocidal war to annihilate our people.

Analyzing Putin’s tactics, one should be fully aware of the fact that all his peace declarations serve no other purpose than to cover up a new attack.

The very nature of his political regime and historical traditions force Russia to continue its aggression.

For that, broadly speaking, Russia’s future is a key global problem of the 21st century.

Putin has to be given credit for one thing: the Kremlin remains in possession of the initiative in the war against Ukraine and the West.

One must understand that safeguarding Euro-Atlantic security depends on whether the West finally takes up the running.

To do so, the mandatory objectives include:

First, collective defense for Ukraine and support of its statehood and democracy.

Second, Ukraine’s accession to NATO, and this historic move should not be shuffled under any political rug.

Ukraine should be invited to become NATO member without delay.

Third, inevitable conviction, punishment, and deterrence by international community of the Russian political regime and military crime machine.

Here special emphasis should be placed on Russian imperialism which is synonymous to Nazism and Fascism, the arch-villain originating from this part of the world.

The sole way of protecting our common freedom and democracy is making Ukraine the NATO member state and putting an end to the Russian imperialism.

This is what Russia fears most.

And this is what we need to attain together.

Danylo Lubkivsky is the director of the Kyiv Security Forum and former Deputy Foreign Minister of Ukraine.