Actually, democracy has been receding over the last six years as measured by various reputable indices. It's not sufficient to call something democratic - after all, the old East Germany was "democratic" as is North Korea today. As Plato noted more than 2,500 years ago, democracy always collapses into populism because in all places and at all times the vast majority of people are utterly ignorant and exceedingly foolish. This means they vote for self-harm and are easy prey for cynical demagogues. So it's hardly surprising that we see democracy ushering in populist excrecences such as Brexit, Trump, Modi, Orban, Putin, Duterte, Bolsonaro, etc. and that the US Republican Party is now overtly theo-fascist, with the UK Conservative Party waddling along behind as fast as it can. So Putin's attempted takeover of Ukraine has nothing to do with a struggle against a "rising tide of global freedom" or any such nonsense. It's merely what one would expect of a thug who's been endlessly appeased by the West for two decades.