Professor Donnacha ? Beach?in:

On the issue of cyberattacks and whether Russia was out to get Ireland, I must confess that I have no evidence to suggest it was or it was not. I think this is a matter for the security forces and An Garda Síochána. I would not be able to comment on that.

On the substantial point about the extent to which the liberal democratic project is perceived as a threat, this is at the heart of this. I lived in the post-Soviet space when that wave of colour revolutions occurred in the mid-2000s, the first of which was the Rose Revolution in Georgia and which was followed by the Orange Revolution in Ukraine and the Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyztan. I wrote a book and a number of articles about that. It took the Kremlin very much by surprise and there was a downturn in relations between the Kremlin and the EU and the west generally from that period onwards because the Kremlin's narrative was that these were foreign-sponsored attempts at coups d'état. The suggestion was that, therefore, they were trying to depopulate the post-Soviet space of those kind of regimes to which Russia has strong attachments and possibly aiming at Russia itself. What we learned from that is that those regimes fell for many reasons. It was not even primarily due to any external support. That view would, of course, deprive the people who were protesting of any agency. It was often the strength of the regime itself that was a factor. Georgia and Kyrgyztan had very weak regimes. Sometimes it was simply the failure of the state rather than the strength of the opposition. The opposition often had to be there, had to be organised and had to be allowed to organise and there had to be a strong civil society, media and NGOs. That was there in places like Georgia and Ukraine, where they had competitive systems. Even though they were not perfect in terms of democratic credentials, they had a competitive system. What we know now is that not only do democratic movements learn from each other, so do authoritarian states. Dictatorships also have a learning curve. What they realised was that they had to shore up those vulnerable areas. We then saw a raft of repressive legislation being brought stultifying the ability of any independent media or NGOs to develop. That all originates from 2005 and 2006 onwards.

It is very much that fear of some kind of democratic popular movement that animates Vladimir Putin's actions in the region. That is at the heart of why Ukraine is so important. It is important to stress the difference between regimes because we often lump them together in the post-Soviet space. Ukraine has had five or six different presidents in the past 15 or 20 years, while only one man has been in charge in Moscow. It is the Kremlin's narrative that Ukraine is a failure because of its political system and should be more like Russia so a successful Ukraine would be a challenge to that important Kremlin narrative.