Last week I was not at the Labour Party Conference. Instead, I was at the Parliamentary Assembly for the Council of Europe.

This is separate from the European Union and contains 47 different countries. It was set up after WWII by Winston Churchill to promote peace across the continent. That peace is under greater threat now than perhaps ever before.

The source of this threat comes from one country: Russia. In the last dozen years President Putin has made little attempt to hide his ambitions to recreate a soviet-style union of states, including many to the west of Russia. He uses a variety of tactics to drag these states into his sphere of influence. In Ukraine it was a fairly traditional military invasion.

In Belarus, he installed a puppet President who does his bidding for him and runs the country like a dictatorship. In Georgia, he has infiltrated one of the largest political parties, Georgian Dream, and used another oligarch, Bidzina Ivanishvili, to control the media and begin the process of dismantling civil society.

The escalation of attacks on civil society in Georgia are demonstrated by the fact that it is not only politicians who are targeted now. Activists, universities, intellectuals and even Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs) are the targets of this brutal suppression. To try and highlight what is happening, I have made speeches about the situation in Georgia pretty much every time I have been to the Council of Europe.

I am in touch with imprisoned opposition leaders and every time I meet the delegation from Georgia, it gets smaller and smaller as they are systematically rounded up and thrown in jail on jumped-up charges. This time was particularly poignant. One woman from the delegation is having a fake ‘trial’ in two weeks’ time. She has young children but it is likely that she will be incarcerated like most of the other opposition leaders and activists.

As I said in my speech, while the world looks elsewhere, the shutters on Georgian civil society are closing fast now. We also met with a delegation from Free Belarus. They all live in exile and have set up a shadow government, complete with democratic elections including Belarusian expats. Russian fighters use Belarus as a launchpad for attacks on Ukraine. All of this has happened even before Putin’s recent aggressive moves towards Poland, Estonia and Romania, where drones and fighter jets probe the resolve of the NATO alliance. Several people have asked me what has all this has to do with us in Cornwall.

My response is that because the international community has been weak in defending the eastern front, Putin has become more confident. If he does attack a NATO country like Poland or Estonia, NATO article 5 is likely to be invoked: an attack on one is an attack on all. That means British servicemen and women could well be directly involved in a conflict with Russia.

Here in Cornwall, whatever your political leanings, we should never ever take our right to democracy and free and fair elections lightly. These are precious rights and need to be nurtured and protected not just here, but throughout Europe.