In the list of countries in which the situation has worsened the most, there is Belarus and especially Russia, which, according to experts, is acquiring many characteristic features of a dictatorship.

As reported by Zarkalo, the state of democracy in 167 countries was analyzed according to five indicators: electoral process and pluralism, government activities, participation in political life, political culture and civil liberties.

States were divided into four categories: "full democracy", "imperfect democracy", "hybrid regime" and "authoritarian regime".

Belarus entered the last group ("authoritarian regime"), as well as among the states where democracy collapsed the most over the past year and fell from 146th to 153rd place in the ranking.

Other countries in this category are

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Assessments were given on a 10-point scale.

In the "political culture" category, Belarus scored 4.38 points, but Belarus did not receive a single point for the electoral process and pluralism.

At the same time, the largest democratic decline was recorded in

: the country fell immediately by 22 positions, to the 146th place.

Analysts associate such drastic changes with, among other things, the war in Ukraine, the state's strict control over the mass media, the suppression of anti-war protests, and repression of opposition politicians and activists.

According to experts, a whole set of factors influenced the low level of democracy in the Russian Federation.

Among them are imperial thinking, a long tradition of subjecting citizens to the state, psychological trauma after the collapse of the USSR and the feeling of humiliation from the loss of the status of a "superpower", rampant crime and corruption in the 90s, Putin's policy of curtailing democratic norms and an attempt to restore Russia as an empire.

Analysts separately noted that "Russia cannot come to terms with the idea of ​​the independence of the former Soviet republics, especially Belarus and Ukraine, and the fact that millions of former Soviet citizens now live outside Russia," the British magazine Zerkalo quotes.