Maltese mirror: What Russia and USA autocracy waves mean for island life

# The autocracies of Russia and the USA: A Maltese mirror on global power games

Valletta’s morning cafés were buzzing last week, but the topic wasn’t the usual village festa or summer beach plans. Instead, pensioners in Republic Street’s coffee shops swapped TikTok clips of Russian police bundling protesters into vans and American campus officers dragging hand-cuffed students across emerald quads. In 2024, the world’s two nuclear titans are auditioning for the same authoritarian script—just with different accents—and Malta, perched on the Mediterranean’s geopolitical fault-line, is watching with a familiar shiver.

We’ve seen this film before. When Muscat’s government rushed economic-passport legislation through parliament in 24 hours, or when journalists found their bank accounts frozen after a critical blog post, Maltese recognised the choreography: executive over-reach, captured courts, demonised press. Today, Moscow labels every dissident a “foreign agent”; Washington dusts off 1950s anti-communist laws to criminalise pro-Palestinian chants. The vocabulary differs, the choreography rhymes.

Take the media. Russia has shuttered the last independent TV network; the U.S. has seen its public-broadcasting budget gutted by 30 % since 2020. In Malta, we lost Daphne Caruana Galizia not to bankruptcy but to a car-bomb. The common denominator? A message to reporters everywhere: dig too deep and you become the story. Our tiny archipelago knows the chill that travels down a columnist’s spine when power stops answering questions and starts filing lawsuits.

Then there’s the courts. The European Court of Human Rights has slammed both countries—Russia for jailing Navalny, the U.S. for migrant-family separations—yet domestic judiciaries march in step with the executive. Maltese remember how our own Attorney-General waited three years to indict Keith Schembri, and how magistrates were promoted days after delivering government-friendly decrees. When rule-of-law indices place Malta only six points above the U.S. and twelve above Russia, pride is tempered by dread.

Economically, the parallels bite. Russian oligarchs funnel wealth into London mansions; Silicon Valley billionaires buy Hawaiian islands; our own PEPs stash cash in Dubai flats. All three nations sport ballooning Gini-coefficients, but Malta’s property prices—up 42 % since 2019—feel like a local remix of the same crony tune. A Sliema realtor recently bragged that “if your surname’s on the sanctions list, we’ve got a penthouse for you.” Laughter followed, uneasy.

Culturally, the island is split. Older voters who lived through Mintoff’s 1980s curfews hear Trump’s promise of “retribution” and recall when Labour thugs smashed PN club windows. Gen-Z activists who spray-paint “Free Gaza” on University of Malta walls see Russian anti-war graffiti and feel a trans-national kinship. Last month, KSU organised a candle-lit vigil for slain Russian dissident Alexei Navalny; the same week, students marched to the US Embassy demanding an end to campus crackdowns. For Maltese youth, authoritarianism isn’t east versus west—it’s a sliding scale, and Malta slides too.

What does this mean for our daily lives? First, foreign policy. With a new American administration threatening tariffs on EU goods and Russia weaponising migration through Libya, Malta’s export-driven recovery (think tuna roe, iGaming licences, film servicing) is hostage to super-power tantrums. Second, security. AFM sources quietly confirm that Russian spy-ships have doubled incursions into Malta’s SAR zone since 2022, while US defence contractors lobby for a drone-base in Gozo. We are, once again, somebody else’s aircraft carrier.

But the biggest impact is civic morale. When Maltese see presidential debates that feel like reality-TV, or opposition leaders jailed on “extremism” charges, our own apathy hardens. “They’re all the same,” mutters the taxi-driver who refused to vote last June. Yet apathy is autocracy’s favourite import. The more we import its memes—fake news, toxic polarisation, performative cruelty—the less we remember that Malta’s size makes resistance practical: one small protest fills Valletta’s streets; one determined MP can stall a budget bill.

Conclusion: Autocracy is not a distant bear or bald eagle; it is a virus that travels by TikTok, by passport sale, by the normalisation of silence. Malta cannot sanction Moscow or unseat Washington, but we can inoculate ourselves. Start by defending our own journalists—subscribe, share, sue on their behalf when SLAPP suits land. Next, resist the local temptation to cheer when “our” side bends rules; a bent rule stays bent for the next administration. Finally, use our size: turn every festa stage into a forum, every band-club into a classroom where citizens practise disagreeing without hatred. The autocracies of Russia and the USA may script the headlines, yet the epilogue is still ours to write—one coffee-shop conversation at a time.