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As the COVID-19 pandemic sweeps across the globe, autocratic governments are finding the crisis to be a useful pretext for strengthening their rule and tightening their grips. In Hungary, Azerbaijan, Egypt, and Russia, strongman leaders are taking advantage of a distracted international community in order to advance and reinforce their own authoritarian agendas.

Melinda Haring and Doug Klain call up Ambassador Dan Baer, former US Ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe; Elspeth Suthers, Senior Program Officer for the South Caucasus, National Endowment for Democracy; Samuel Tadros, Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute; Anna Nemtsova, Moscow Correspondent, The Daily Beast; and Jacob Heilbrunn, Editor, The National Interest to discuss this troubling trend.

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Image: Russian President Vladimir Putin wearing protective gear at a hospital for patients infected with coronavirus on the outskirts of Moscow. March 24, 2020. Sputnik/Alexey Druzhinin/Kremlin