Olivier Matthys/AP

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg speaks during a media conference at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Sept. 30. He has pledged that Ukraine's Western allies would not cede to veiled Russian nuclear threats.

For NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s veiled threats to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine amount to one thing – “nuclear blackmailing.”

NATO partners will not bow to such nuke-rattling, the alliance leader said this week, and will not stop supporting Ukraine for fear of a Russian nuclear strike.

Yet as the United States and European powers confront what has rapidly become the most serious nuclear showdown in 60 years, their response has shifted from an almost blasé dismissal of Mr. Putin’s nuclear threats early in the war to planning for a swift and overwhelming response, should Russia actually resort to the previously unthinkable.

President Putin “is not joking when he talks about potential use of tactical nuclear weapons,” President Joe Biden warned on Thursday. “For the first time since the Cuban missile crisis, we have a direct threat of the use (of a) nuclear weapon if in fact things continue down the path they are going.”

Whether Mr. Putin would actually move beyond threats to use is unknown, but it is clear that he seeks with his threats to weaken U.S. and European solidarity with Ukraine, much as he has played the energy card, some international analysts say.  

“With these threats Putin is trying to rattle the West’s resolve to support Ukraine, he’s planting seeds of fear,” says Nikolas Gvosdev, a professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. “But so far the West’s and certainly the U.S. response has been, ‘No, resorting to the nuclear card is not going to work.’”

On Tuesday, President Joe Biden appeared to pointedly meet Mr. Putin’s talk of nuclear weapons with a phone call to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in which he pledged a new round of military assistance, including more of the advanced armaments that are helping the Ukrainian military put Russia on the defensive. 

ITAR-TASS/Reuters/File

Russian President Vladimir Putin watches the launch of a missile during naval exercises in Russia's Arctic North on board the nuclear missile cruiser Pyotr Veliky in 2005. He has recently stepped up veiled threats to use a nuclear weapon against Ukraine.

Remembering the Cuban crisis

One key reason Washington and other Western capitals are taking Mr. Putin’s threat more seriously: The Russian leader has doubled down on his position that the war in Ukraine, which he launched, represents an existential challenge for Russia and its place as a great global power.

Russia’s nuclear doctrine allows for first use of nuclear weapons only “when the very existence of the state is in jeopardy.” That gives added meaning to Mr. Putin’s statement on Sept. 30 that the four Ukrainian regions he annexed are now “forever” part of Russia and would be defended like any other Russian territory, “by all the means we possess.”

Moreover, Mr. Putin has long made plain that he sees Russia’s nuclear arsenal – and a credible threat to use it – as a central pillar of his country’s superpower status. 

The Pentagon has begun gaming steps it might take if Russian forces were to use a nuclear device, some official sources say. At the same time, the White House has employed back channels to hint to Moscow the kinds of devastating military ripostes – though nothing nuclear – it might expect if it resorted to using even low-yield tactical nuclear weapons.

Sixty years ago this month, the Cuban missile crisis plunged the world into fear of a nuclear winter, when Washington caught the Soviet Union building nuclear missile launch sites less than 100 miles from the U.S. coastline, and blockaded the island. After 13 tense days, Moscow removed the missiles already in Cuba, and the crisis was defused.

Nuclear arms experts are quick to differentiate the current tensions from 1962, however. For one thing, Russia is not seen to be threatening to use the kind of strategic nuclear weapons that could take out major American cities, but rather the so-called “tactical” nuclear weapons that can be fired from a rocket-launcher or truck bed to devastate a military base or a few city blocks.

Moreover, the U.S. is not threatening to respond in kind to an eventual tactical nuclear attack in Ukraine, thus minimizing the risk of escalation to nuclear Armageddon.    

Last month, U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan warned that “any use of nuclear weapons will be met with catastrophic consequences for Russia,” and that “the U.S. and our allies will respond decisively.”

“If Putin had the idea that somehow Jake Sullivan was going to ... march into the [president’s office] and say, ‘We’d better stop the West’s support for Ukraine because of this nuclear threat,’ well, that was never going to happen,” Dr. Gvosdev says.

Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

U.S. President Joe Biden says he takes seriously Russian President Vladimir Putin's veiled threats to use a nuclear weapon in Ukraine.

Balancing acts on both sides

At the same time, the Biden administration has always recognized the risk of Russia’s war in Ukraine evolving into a big-power confrontation – with potential nuclear implications – and has calibrated its response to avoid that outcome, some experts say.

“From the beginning of this war, the administration has been trying to balance their response between two main goals, one being to help the Ukrainians ... and the other being to avoid a broader NATO-Russia war that could lead to some kind of nuclear confrontation,” says Steven Pifer, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine who is now affiliated with the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University in California.

“They’ve done a pretty good job at finding that balance,” he says, while cautioning that Mr. Putin is complicating that task by adding a nuclear dimension to his “gambit to create a new geopolitical reality in Europe.”

Mr. Biden has stopped short of delivering to Ukraine the longer-range missile systems that could reach deep into Russia, and this week he cold-shouldered Mr. Zelenskyy’s declaration that Ukraine is already a de facto member of NATO.

Yet despite Mr. Putin’s heightened stridency, Dr. Gvosdev, a Russia scholar, says the Russian leader must perform a balancing act of his own.

“He’s faced with walking a pretty tricky line domestically and internationally,” he says. On the one hand Mr. Putin must satisfy the desire among “hardline Kremlin elites” and a slice of the Moscow social media audience for tough action, and on the other “not provoke a U.S. and NATO response that could turn out badly for him.”

In that light, Dr. Gvosdev says, recent unconfirmed reports of the Russian military moving some nuclear hardware around can be seen as directed at both of Mr. Putin’s key audiences – the Moscow hardliners he wants to assuage, and the West, which he wants to keep guessing.

Using a tactical nuclear bomb, however, would at most temporarily halt Ukraine’s territorial gains, some military analysts say, while it would almost certainly make Russia even more of an international pariah, souring relations even with friends like those in Beijing and New Delhi.

What’s needed now, says Ambassador Pifer, is probably occurring behind the scenes: quiet diplomacy and private communications between U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin; Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and their Russian counterparts to lay out the harsh consequences of any resort to nuclear weapons.

Larissa Santana looked on in disbelief last Sunday as the final vote tally flickered across the screen looming over a packed square in Rio de Janeiro’s historic center.

She, along with hundreds of Brazilians clad mostly in red, had flocked there expecting to celebrate the triumphant return to power of former leftist President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known more commonly as simply Lula. Instead, unexpected support for far-right incumbent Jair Bolsonaro forced the presidential elections to a competitive runoff, revealing a more divided Brazil than most previously understood.

“I never imagined a second round,” says Ms. Santana, a university student, wearing a shirt plastered with stickers of Lula’s face. “It’s a shock this many people still support Bolsonaro,” she says, referring to both his bombastic, often sexist, racist, and violent rhetoric, and the poor performance of the economy over the past four years that has plunged millions of Brazilians into poverty.

Ms. Santana wasn’t the only one taken by surprise. Mr. Bolsonaro won 43% of the vote, outperforming polls that placed him a distant second. Lula drew 48%, landing in first place but falling short of the majority needed to avoid a runoff on Oct. 30.

Lula is still favored to win the presidency. But even if he is elected, Mr. Bolsonaro’s enduring popularity – along with the victories of many far-right candidates to congressional, senate, and gubernatorial posts – underscores an irrefutable consolidation of a far-right sentiment that pollsters and academics largely missed over the past four years.

“What this vote showed us is that ‘bolsonarismo’ is a really powerful and persistent force,” says Vinicius Saragiotto Magalhães Do Valle, a political scientist at the University of São Paulo. “It seems like it’s here to stay.”

For all the Bolsonaro critiques, Lula comes with his own baggage, still trying to shake off a corruption scandal that briefly landed him in prison in 2018. Brazil’s next president will face the overwhelming challenge of reconciling a deeply divided nation and winning the trust of voters with sharply conflicting visions for Brazil’s future.

“We have a society that is very polarized,” Dr. Valle says. “That’s going to remain, no matter who wins the second round.”

Whashington Alves/Reuters

President Jair Bolsonaro meets with businessmen from the Minas Gerais State Federation of Industries, in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, Oct. 6. Minas Gerais is Brazil's second-most populous state and considered key to winning the presidency.

Polarizing choices

A firebrand populist, Mr. Bolsonaro has styled himself after former U.S. President Donald Trump. The former Army captain says the political left represents a threat to “traditional values,” and he’s vowed to fight efforts to legalize abortion or to bring transgender bathrooms to schools. Such rhetoric has instilled fear in part of the population, while simultaneously winning him fans among conservatives, especially evangelical voters who now account for about a third of the population.

“Bolsonaro feeds off of these differences, he feeds off of demonizing ‘the other,’” says Dr. Valle. “This is what mobilizes his base.”

Still, many voters have grown frustrated with Mr. Bolsonaro, amid surging fuel and food prices that have made life harder for millions. The president has responded by spending heavily on welfare ahead of the elections.

For Rafaela Souza, a cook in Rio de Janeiro, the president hasn’t done enough to ease the economic pain of the working class. “I’m neither for nor against Bolsonaro,” she says. “But look at how expensive everything is, look at our salaries. It’s not fair.”

Last Sunday, she voted for Lula, and she plans to repeat that choice in the runoff. “When Lula was president, he helped the poor a lot. Things were easier for us.”

Lula was president from 2003 to 2010, a period marked by sky-high commodity prices that funded his social agenda, like the famous cash-transfer program Bolsa Familia, or the anti-hunger program Fome Zero. Millions of Brazilians are nostalgic for that golden era of prosperity and support. But a sprawling corruption scandal embroiled his leftist Workers’ Party (PT) and landed him in prison in 2018, making him a lightning rod for polarization.

A Supreme Court scrapped his conviction last year, ruling that the judge in the case had been biased. Despite clearing his name in court, millions of Brazilians can’t forget his fall from grace.

“Lula is a crook, all he did was rob our country,” says Paulo Henrique Duarte, a taxi driver in a beachside neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro. “People don’t want scandal and corruption anymore.”

Mr. Duarte voted for Mr. Bolsonaro in the first round, in a bid to keep Lula from returning to power. When his candidate came in second, he suspected electoral foul play. “The vote was rigged, there’s no doubt about it,” he says. “Bolsonaro should have won.”

For months, Mr. Bolsonaro has tirelessly sowed doubts about the electoral system. Taking a page out of Mr. Trump’s playbook, the incumbent has claimed without evidence that Brazil’s electronic voting machines are rigged in his rival’s favor. Like Mr. Duarte, many Bolsonaro supporters are convinced that the left is trying to steal the election.

“Bolsonaro will continue to bet on this radicalized discourse,” says Marjorie Corrêa Marona, a political science professor at the Federal University of Minas Gerais. “This can incite violence, not only in the form of hate speech, but also spilling out onto the street with voters.”

Politically motivated violence has already marked the elections. There were multiple reports of citizens being stabbed for their political views, and in July, a police officer fatally shot the treasurer of a local PT branch at the victim’s Lula-themed birthday party over their differing political views.

Roughly two-thirds of Brazilians say they fear becoming victims of violence based on their political choices, according to a recent survey by pollster Datafolha. As the second round nears, concerns are growing that a potential loss for Mr. Bolsonaro could result in a violent backlash.

“If Lula wins, all of Brazil will go out to the streets in protest,” says Izabel Pereira Costa, a hair stylist who says she’ll join the boycott. “We’re going to fight for our country.”

Mariana Greif/Reuters

Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, former president of Brazil, greets supporters in Sao Bernardo do Campo, Brazil, Oct. 6. Lula is counting on some of the country's 32 million voters who sat out the Oct. 2 election to choose him in the runoff against incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro.

Building bridges?

As Lula and Mr. Bolsonaro scramble to shore up support ahead of the runoff, they are eyeing the 10 million, mostly moderate, voters who cast ballots for third-party candidates in the first round. The victor will need to “establish a dialogue with this slice of the electorate” in order to win the second round, says Dr. Marona.

For much of his campaign, Lula has vowed to tax the rich and spend on the poor. But in his quest for more support, he’s recently struck a more conciliatory tone, reaching out to centrists, forming new political alliances, and promising to govern for all Brazilians.

Mr. Bolsonaro, meanwhile, is leaning on conservative allies, including the newly-elected governors of Brazil’s three most populous states. In a bid to woo poorer voters, Lula’s traditional base, he’s also pledged to boost spending on welfare. “This can make a big difference in the last stretch of a tight race,” says Dr. Valle.

It wasn’t just the entrenched support for Mr. Bolsonaro that surprised observers in the first-round vote. Voter turnout, which dipped to its lowest levels since 1998, was unexpected in a race that seemed to push Brazilians into two extreme camps from the start. Of those that did vote, some 5.3 million ballots were cast blank or spoiled.

The polarization and violence of this election cycle “keeps many people away from the public spaces, from public demonstrations – and it silences the debate,” around key issues, says Dr. Marona. “We may have even higher abstention than we had in the first round.”

Genilson Galdino, a doorman in a wealthy part of Rio de Janeiro, believes Lula is the better choice for Brazil. But, last Sunday, he didn’t make the two-hour trip to the polling station. “I’d rather pay the fine – it’s less than I’ll spend on transport to get there,” he says of the penalty for not voting in elections, which are compulsory in Brazil.

He recognizes the next president will determine a lot about his country’s future – as well as his day-to-day economic struggles. But will he vote on Oct. 30? Maybe, he says. “If it falls on my day off.”

Others see the unexpectedly close race as a possible incentive to mobilize voters in the second round. That’s the case for Ms. Santana, the university student. “It’s up to us” to vote for the results we want to see in the second round, she says.  

“I think the shock of the first round will force people to go out and vote,” says Dr. Valle. “This could help Lula.”

The “Wild One” was tamed by Hurricane Ian.

That’s how Victor Coletta summarizes his experience – and that of his boat – as the massive storm churned through southwest Florida last week. 

Mr. Coletta rode out the storm, along with other houseboat dwellers from the same marina, in a parking garage across the street. He and his dog slept inside his pickup truck. More than 15 feet of storm surge inundated the area, picking up Mr. Coletta’s houseboat – the Wild One is big enough to have two levels and two small bedrooms – and landing it on nearby cement.

At one point, he tried to run outside amid Ian’s triple-digit winds, but he turned around.

“If I could have gotten out here early enough before the surge went down ...” Mr. Coletta says, his voice trailing off as he leans against his truck, pondering what might have prevented the damage.

He shakes his head and stares back toward his boat as it lies on its side in front of him. He considers himself fortunate. He still has his life and his dog. Mr. Coletta opens the door of his truck when he says this; a gray labradoodle sticks his head out. “Who’s a good boy?” he asks him.

The Wild One was more than just a boat. As was true for many with boats docked permanently along the marina, it was Mr. Coletta’s home. More importantly, it was his dream – to eventually move from his native Michigan to Fort Myers for a life on the water. He relocated to the area in December.

Southwest Florida’s houseboat culture is distinct in its charm, but the increasing volatility of storms is putting this lifestyle – and its role in the local economy and community – at new risk. Houseboat owners here are reeling emotionally and financially. Many intend to stay; some may not. 

The Sunshine State and its rainy days

Under Florida law, fully insuring houseboats isn’t mandatory. Many houseboat occupants across the region decline to obtain full coverage. Mr. Coletta is among the exceptions.

But even for those like him who already have full coverage of their homes, a catastrophic event like Ian gives pause. Florida’s struggling insurance industry has already seen six providers go out of business this year. And in June, a Florida Office of Insurance Regulation report cited at least 30 more at risk of shuttering due to financial instability.

Houseboat dwellers worry that they’ll be among those most difficult to insure in the future, and that premiums will soar.

The state has faced hurricanes throughout its history, but scientists say warming air and water temperatures are enabling more powerful storms like Ian, which made landfall near here as a Category 4 with winds exceeding 150 mph.

Those who opted not to evacuate saw a storm surge inundate neighborhoods up to 12 miles inland. Federal officials estimated more than 4,000 emergency rescues occurred. Early estimates cite Ian as the deadliest storm to hit Florida since 1935 (more than 100 fatalities) and the costliest (damages may exceed $100 billion).

For houseboat dwellers, Ian’s fallout is hard to put a figure to. Many of their boats – their homes – now lie scattered across the Fort Myers area. Some are totaled. Many will require repairs.

Kyle Collard, a boat mechanic who relocated to Fort Myers from Colorado last year with his wife, has only liability insurance due to the cost of full coverage. During the storm, their houseboat lost a bedroom wall, and a pylon from the marina dock was forced through the boat’s deck.

The houseboats of their immediate neighbors both sank. Theirs would have done the same had Mr. Collard not stepped out to fix it after the storm passed through Thursday morning, as Ian’s winds gradually died down. 

And unlike others, Mr. Collard has the skills to help point their lives forward.

A Harley and a houseboat

Scott Ready is thankful to be grieving only the loss of his Harley-Davidson motorcycle, engulfed by the storm surge in the marina’s parking lot. The motorcycle was among his only possessions when he relocated from Las Vegas last year.

Xander Peters

Scott Ready poses in front of his houseboat on the marina in North Fort Myers, Florida, on Oct. 3, 2022, only days after Hurricane Ian marched through the region. He considers himself fortunate compared with his neighbors who lost their boats.

Living on a boat in southwest Florida had always been Mr. Ready’s goal. He finally accomplished it, but he knew better than to attempt to ride out the storm in his home.

During Ian, Mr. Ready traveled to a friend’s home in nearby Cape Coral. It was his first hurricane, and they were on Ian’s eyewall. He felt it rip the siding from his friend’s home. 

The next day, he returned to his side of the bridge in North Fort Myers, where his boat was docked. It remained, but it was among only a handful that were still livable.  

“Half the boats ain’t even here no more,” Mr. Ready says, pointing across the marina.

Some boats were jarred loose from the dock and swept out to sea. Many sank.

“My friend didn’t fare so well,” Mr. Ready adds, pointing to the hull of an overturned boat.

Much of Mr. Ready’s life has consisted of simply moving on. He says this is another example. It’s what will be required of all his houseboat neighbors, in one way or another, as they get their lives back in order.

It’s part of their culture of life on the water.

“It’s got to be that simple,” Mr. Ready says, noting that it’s unclear when power will be available on the marina again. “Rebuild, move on. You can’t sit around and cry about it.”

“I’m a survivor, man,” he adds, with no intention of leaving Florida or houseboat living behind. “I’m gonna be all right.”

In January 1961, Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes became the first Black students to attend the University of Georgia. After graduation, Ms. Hunter-Gault pursued a career in journalism writing for, among others, The New Yorker and The New York Times. She went on to become a correspondent for PBS in 1977, where she won two Emmys and a Peabody Award for her NewsHour series from South Africa, “Apartheid’s People.” She also covered Africa for NPR, winning a second Peabody Award. She spoke with the Monitor about her latest book, “My People: Five Decades of Writing About Black Lives.” 

You integrated the University of Georgia. What gave you the fortitude to pursue such a difficult path?

I never thought about its being difficult. When I have had to really dig deep, I go back to my upbringing. My mother used to send me to my grandmother’s in Florida. My grandfather was the preacher in the church, but my grandmother was its “saint.” Every day she would make me learn a Bible verse. I did not realize until the morning after the riots at UGA, after we’d gone back to Atlanta and journalists were asking us how we’d managed to get through them, that it was my grandmother’s teaching me, “Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.” And so I didn’t. You don’t have any idea what’s inside your soul or your spirit until you get challenged. That was the real answer.

Have there been instances when you’ve had to practice forgiveness to move past the trauma you’ve faced? 

I don’t think I ever really felt traumatized because there were good things that happened too. [At UGA] they had put me in a room by myself on the first floor, away from the other students in the dorm. One night I heard a knock at my door, and it was several girls. They had grocery bags and they said, “We came to cook dinner for you, is that OK?” It turned out they were Jewish. As they prepared the meal, they told me they identified with what was happening to me because of their grandparents. Growing up in the South, I knew Black and white. That was all. These girls began to explain the Holocaust. I learned something. And they learned something. That was 60 years ago, and we remain friends to this day.

We didn’t know about PTSD back then, but I think it had something to do with it. I suffered from claustrophobia for many years. So those experiences [at UGA] left their mark. Others too.

Why did you choose journalism?

My grandmother read three newspapers a day. I would wait for her to give me the comics, and I fell in love with Brenda Starr. She traveled the world and met all kinds of people. I loved this idea. Later, in my segregated elementary school, we learned about Ida B. Wells who was a journalist and activist and wrote about Black people in a way nobody else was doing. I’m not an activist, but I have tried to report on things that activists have embraced to help change how this country looks at Black people.

You write that you always felt the responsibility to confront issues of race and racism but in ways that focus on the positive aspects of these differences, how they can enrich us, rather than on the all-too-exploited negative ways in which they divide us. How do you think this can be achieved? 

I wanted to look at people of color in the ways that they had not been looked at in the mainstream media, to present us as whole human beings. It’s not all death, destruction, disaster, and despair, like many people believe. There’s a lot more to us than that. I want to tell the truth about our people, so you can get to know them in a different way.   

Lately, we’ve been hearing about contributions Black women have made. But you write about a number of Black men whom you have known, worked alongside, or interviewed. Is there anything in particular that stood out to you about them?   

Well, most were involved. They were activists. Civil rights activists. Anti-apartheid activists. They believed in something. And, as John Lewis used to say, most of them were committed to making “good trouble.” When he and those first groups of Freedom Riders started off from D.C., they all wrote their wills. Black and white, they wrote their wills. They knew there was a chance they might not be coming back. And John got off the bus in – I think it was one of the Carolinas – and they started beating him. 

In one way or another, they were working for equality for us all. They didn’t give up. But I also think we must be careful not to generalize things into silos – Black vs. white, men vs. women. My favorite thing about our democracy is that we are moving toward a more perfect union. We’re not perfect yet, but we are moving in that direction. 

If you could go back to 1961, what would you tell your 18-year-old self? 

I would tell her to pursue her dreams and not let anything stand in the way of that. That’s really what I did. What we need right now is a coalition of the generations. There are things we can share with the younger generation. It is important to have somebody who’s my age share their experiences, because we have a lot we can be proud of, so that even when our young people hit a hard place, they will keep on keeping on. 

I’d also like to open conversations. We must learn how to communicate with people who have the wrong ideas about our history and our lives and our future. We’ve got to do this. We all have so much in common as human beings. It’s also important we acknowledge our successes. We do still have a lot of challenges, but there are people out there working on them. It’s a very exciting time to be alive.

AP

A picture of one of the Nobel Peace Prize winners for 2022, jailed Belarus rights activist Ales Bialiatski, is placed next to previous years Nobel Peace Prize winners at the garden of the Nobel Institute in Oslo, Norway, Oct. 7.

This year’s Nobel Peace Prize went to two civil society groups and one democracy activist, all of them champions of what the Nobel committee calls “fundamental rights.” Yet the prize’s more telling message may lie in the location of the three winners: Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus.

In an article last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that the “people” of these three neighboring countries are a united civilization, a “Russian world” distinct from the West with its assertion of universal values (such as fundamental rights).

Just days after the article was published in July 2021, Belarus’ dictator rounded up many pro-democracy activists – including Ales Bialiatski, one winner of the 2022 peace prize. Seven months later, Russia invaded Ukraine. 

Then last month, after an effort to annex eastern Ukraine to Russia, Mr. Putin again challenged the “West’s dogmatic conviction that its civilization ... is an indisputable model for the entire world to follow.”

The 2022 Nobel Prize could be a refutation of Mr. Putin’s notion that humanity is divvied up by civilizations, each entitled to its own facts with no binding, universal truths.

From his prison cell in Belarus, Mr. Bialiatski is perhaps subjected daily to Mr. Putin’s theories. One of his fellow prisoners and human rights activists, Valiantsin Stefanovich, sent out a letter last month citing constant state TV broadcasts “trying to convince us that human rights and democracy are an invention of the ‘collective West’ that is ‘alien to our traditional values.’”

Democracy, he wrote, “cannot be ‘western,’ ‘eastern,’ or ‘southern.’ The country’s either a democracy or not.” The autocracies of Russia and Belarus, he warned, “strive to impose their ‘separate civilization’ on other peoples, even by waging wars.” Rights are universal and inalienable, and cannot be taken away from us, he added.

The Nobel committee has thrown a lifeline to those fighting for individual rights in Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine. This year’s award aims to honor those who see values such as liberty as inherent to all. Free in their own conscience, these activists see others as also free to embrace fundamental rights. As Mr. Stefanovich wrote, such work is one of peace, not war.