Dear colleagues! 

I thank Lithuania for the great idea and organisation of this event. I am grateful for the opportunity to address you online.

Ukraine is a frontline democracy, a democracy at war for itself and the rest of the free world against one of the most brutal and aggressive dictatorships, Russia. We have a lot of experience to share.

I am sure you are all well-aware of Russia’s illegal invasion and horrifying atrocity crimes, the pain and damage that Russia has inflicted on Ukraine. And I guess we all here agree that Russia is the aggressor and its invasion has never been justified by any real cause except for Putin's will to destroy Ukraine. I will not use my time today to repeat the facts you already know.

Instead, I would like to focus on five key takeaways we can share with all other nations confronted by authoritarian regimes today. These can be generally called bravery, solidarity, communications, countering disinfo, and cold-headed approach.

The first guiding principle is bravery. The price for defending our freedom is enormously high, but we know that the price of losing it would be much higher. We saw what Russians did in Bucha and other towns around Kyiv, in Mariupol and other places. They come with kill-lists from their security services and search for activists, human rights defenders, volunteers, and former servicemen, to execute them. Ukraine’s history of the previous century has taught us that the loss of our own state leads to the loss of freedom, persecution, and even genocide. Bolsheviks destroyed the Ukrainian state in 1921 and twelve years later they starved four million Ukrainians in a genocidal man-made famine. Lithuania is perfectly aware of how disastrous the Soviet rule has been for our nations. The lesson is: protect your state and national security bravely in order to protect your freedom.

The second guiding principle is social cohesion and horizontal solidarity. The war between Ukraine and Russia is also a war between horizontal and vertical social models. The Ukrainian model of governance is based on a decentralised initiative, horizontal ties, strong civil society and volunteer movement. For us, this is a people’s war. On the contrary, Russia is a regime which has suppressed any social and political activity. It is based on fear and vertical subordination. Russian social fabric is dead. For Russia, this is a state’s, not people’s war. Ukraine’s model has proven to be more difficult to manage, but it is generally much more resilient and regenerating than the Russian model. At the same time, it is more difficult for democracies to fight a war than for authoritarian regimes. One difference is that the latter do not need to rely on popular opinion, while democracies heavily rely on it. The other difference is the circulation of information which is crucial for the war effort.

This brings me to the third guiding principle: strong domestic and external communications. For a frontline democracy to effectively resist a stronger authoritarian enemy, good communications are a must. This includes creative industry joining efforts with the government in producing content; strong digital presence of key politicians and speakers online; strong digital diplomacy, the sense of foreign audiences and an evidence-based approach to measuring the results.

Communications are key to galvanising global support and sustaining media attention. They need to be swift, proactive, creative, emotional, based on facts and well-targeted. It’s important to remember that authoritarian regimes are powerful communicators too. They invest enormous financial and human resources in crafting state propaganda and disseminating it abroad.

Therefore, the fourth guiding principle is resilience to disinformation and hybrid threats. Ukraine has developed a strong immune system to Russian disinformation over the past eight years, but we have also seen the development of a resilient and decentralised network of fact-checking organisations able to counter Russian disinformation.

The fifth guiding principle is realism and a critical, self-reflecting approach. One huge difference between the leadership of Ukraine and Russia which helped us achieve important battleground victories during the early stages of Russia’s invasion is that we in Ukraine have never fallen victims to our own propaganda, because we don’t have one like Russians do. The entire Russian military command, their political class and leadership have intoxicated themselves with their own propaganda to the extent that they simply lost the sense of reality and started believing their own lies. This led to them underestimating the country they attacked. Their poor assessment led them to making one mistake after the other. On the contrary, we in Ukraine prefer to rather underestimate ourselves and see things in a more critical way than they really are. But this helps us keep our heads cold and our hearts warm. It is critically important to not lose the sense of reality and never underestimate your enemy.

I hope these five guiding principles will be of help. I believe that as frontline democracies we must unite and help each other at this difficult moment in history. Values and rule of law will be stronger than any brutal force seeking to destroy them. Freedom is the strongest power in the world. We just need to arm and equip it appropriately to be able to defend itself against tyranny.

I thank you for your attention.