The American president joe biden, who has vowed to restore American hegemony after the presidency of Donald Trump, opens the second Summit on Democracy today, under the shadow of the war in Ukraine and concerns about the strengthening of China’s power.

This second session, like the first in 2021, will take place mainly online and will last three days. Biden has invited 121 leaders from around the world, eight more than last time.

At 13:00 Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis will take part via video conference in the second summit of the “Conference for Democracy”, at the invitation of the President of the United States Joe Biden.

Moreover, in order to avoid any charge of American self-centeredness, he invited the leaders of Zambia, Costa Rica, South Korea and the Netherlands — as representatives of continents — to co-host the summit.

Biden is expected to announce $690 million in investments to support “democratic renewal” around the world, a senior US official told reporters on condition of anonymity.

These resources will be used to promote the conduct of fair and free elections, the defense of human rights and freedom of expression, as well as the fight against corruption, he added. The official even clarified that this amount will be added to the 400 million dollars released during the first session.

Each of the leaders of the five co-hosting venues will chair an online meeting today. The meeting organized by the USA is dedicated “to the response of democracies to global challenges” with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as an invitee.

Tomorrow Thursday, during the second day of the meeting, events will be held in the capitals of each of the co-hosting countries.

In addition, the summit will be attended by officials and members of civil society to talk about the challenges facing democracy around the world, including in the technology sector, at a time when Westerners blame the TikTok that serves Beijing.

Turkey and Hungary

While Biden has kept his campaign promises to hold the summit and renewed U.S. ties with many countries, he has also drawn criticism for working to bring Washington closer to leaders accused of authoritarian tendencies and questionable track records. what about human rights.

The US president visited Saudi Arabia and Egypt last year to participate in COP27, and he also approached Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

None of those three countries have been invited to the summit, which has excluded Hungary’s nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, as have the leaders of Singapore and Bangladesh.

The State Department declined to specify the criteria by which the invitations were made. “We are not trying to define which countries are or are not democracies,” a spokesman said.

Five African countries that were excluded two years ago will participate in the session this year: Tanzania, Ivory Coast, Gambia, Mauritania and Mozambique.

Pakistan declined the invitation saying, according to a spokesman, that it wished to “work bilaterally” with the countries co-hosting the summit.

South Korea, for its part, has offered to host the third Democracy Summit, without specifying when, according to a US official.