Autocrats are just like ordinary people. They laugh. They drink champagne. They take sides. But in this game, not everyone is playing on the same side.
Last week’s official meetings and foreign trips of some of the most well-known autocrats in Ukraine, Russia, and China is illustrative of that.
So, while Russia continues building up its troops on the Ukrainian border, the President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdoğan traveled to Kyiv to sign an extensive free trade agreement and offer Ukraine to mediate its conflict with Russia.
In the same week, Hungarian PM Viktor Orbán was all smiles in the Kremlin, raising champagne glasses with Mr. Putin and to his attempt to revamp the world order and legitimize the power of autocracies.
Two days later, Putin went on an official visit to Beijing to participate in the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympic Games and meet his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping.
Following that, the loverbirds issued an official statement, which for all its vague formulations and innuendos, could be put down to one sentence:
“U.S. and NATO, back off now.“
And while at it AUKUS – the trilateral security pact between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States in the Indo-Pacific region – should do so too.
The joint statement provides an extensive insight into Russia and China’s wants and needs. To begin with, it reasserts that neither Moscow nor Beijing accepts the idea of the nation- states’ right, including Ukraine, to choose their allies.
This line:
“No State can or should ensure its own security separately from the security of the rest of the world and at the expense of the security of other States,“
clearly indicates that.
While most of the passages, for example, an expression of annoyance with “some actors representing but the minority on the international scale” who “continue to advocate unilateral approaches to addressing international issues and resort to force”, could be considered traditional, some are outright disquieting.
A paragraph where China and Russia criticize others for trying “to monopolize the right to assess the level of compliance with democratic criteria, to draw dividing lines based on the grounds of ideology, including by establishing exclusive blocs and alliances of convenience, prove to be nothing but flouting of democracy and go against the spirit and true values of democracy” is among them.
Other than questioning the very premises of sanity, this passage suggests that Moscow and Beijing are no longer content with resorting to the promotion of “threading their own path” or “whataboutisms”.
China and Russia are now creating a whole new reality where countries like China and Russia are not your average kleptocratic, free election-averse states. On the contrary, these are “the true democracies” and “peacemakers”.
Those questioning these “democratic practices” are trying “to monopolize the criteria” and are also “very aggressive” as opposed to those invading former spheres of influence on a whim.
Mixed implications for Ukraine
Autocratic Hungary and Turkey might feel sympathetic toward Mr. Putin and Jinping's attempts to make the world a safe place for autocracies.
However, their membership in NATO and, in Hungary’s case, the European Union as well precludes them from joining the new world vision in full.
In a radio interview following his visit to Moscow, Orbán emphasized that the country wants to maintain good relations with Russia while being a member of NATO and the EU, promoting the so-called “Hungarian model”, a replica of Ukraine’s former President Leonid Kuchma’s “multi-vector” policy of balancing between the West and Russia.
For Ukraine, the “Hungarian model” is certainly not good news, as Hungary regularly plays the ethnic-minority card in the bordering Transcarpathian region (once part of the Austro- Hungarian Empire), where it has issued its passports in bulk against Ukrainian law.
After Orbán’s visit to Moscow, Budapest also blocked Ukraine’s much-needed membership bid in the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defense Center of Excellence. Since the Hungarian PM is already preparing to win the upcoming parliamentary elections, the “Hungarian model” will continue to give Kyiv a recurrent headache and hinder its foreign ambitions.
Like . Orbán, Erdoğan enjoys strong economic ties with Russia and, according to a senior analyst at the Center in Modern Turkish Studies (Carleton University) Dr. Yevgeniya Gaber, is likewise known for carrying out a two-faced foreign policy.
Yet, unlike the Hungarian PM, who claimed to travel to Moscow with “a peacekeeping mission” that turned out to be an incorrect spelling of “striking a gas deal”, Mr. Erdoğan, who, according to Dr. Gaber, bears a personal grudge against Russia since 2020, seems to be keener on resolving the current conflict.
Ankara has already given the green light to co-producing a Turkish-made drone at a production site in Ukraine.
Erdoğan also announced that President Volodymyr Zelensky has agreed to his good offices in seeking to arrange negotiations with his Russian counterpart in Ankara.
Even if not entirely pro-Ukrainian, Turkey’s desire to assert its regional influence and the fact that it is committed to protecting the interests of Crimean Tatars who are being prosecuted in the Russia-occupied Crimea bode well for Ukraine.
At least for the time being, as autocrats, just like any of us, change their minds.
