Postface: New Russia’s Imperialism and Populist Deluge from the Current Perspective of Russia’s Aggression Against Ukraine

Abstract

Populism is a political process of democratic erosion that has influenced a general intellectual and moral regression, further underlined by the COVID-19 pandemic. Populism arose from core dissatisfactions in developed European societies and within in the geographical peripheries that were included in the process of EU enlargement, or where enlargement has not been not successful. Populists are political allies of the Kremlin and views from the perspective of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine provided clearer insights into their participation in the emergence of the deepest and most dangerous crisis in European relations since 1945. Putin’s current failure in Ukraine has further exposed the network of populists and their role in his imperial agenda. Moreover, Russia’s aggression against Ukraine mobilised new European forces of resistance to populism and Russian imperialism, from the Baltics to the Mediterranean – from Estonia and Poland to Montenegro and Kosovo.