Reemerging Russia: Why Baltic Nations Are So Worried?

Russia was never so vast and powerful as during the second half of 20^th century. Soviets controlled territories as from Vladivostok to Bering straight in the East, bordered Afghanistan and occupied Caucasus in the South and East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary to the west. This was the peak of Russian power. Soviet Union, a global superpower, was ruled from the same Kremlin, Vladimir Putin resides present day. Russian military might threatened peace both in Europe and the World. Looks like the empire that fell in the early 1990s is rising from ashes. That rise isn't neither bloodless nor reassuring.

Three Baltic Nations were under Russian occupation for the bigger part of 20^th century: from 1900 to WWI and from 1944 to early 1990s. Red Army managed to push Soviet sphere of influence a hundred miles west of Berlin. Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were incorporated into Soviet Empire. The first decade after 1944 was extremely painful not only for Baltic Nations, but for western Warsaw pact states as well. WWII ravaged Eastern and Central Europe like no other region. However horrors were not over. After taking Baltic States from Nazi grip, soviets arrested country elites (teachers, statesmen, businessmen, land owners) and sent them and their families to hard labor camps in Siberia. In the first decade under soviet rule Lithuania fought a long and bloody guerrilla war against occupiers.

Soviets held their victims in an iron fist. Not only states incorporated into Soviet Union were strictly monitored by KGB (soviet secret service), all dissent was harshly punished in Warsaw pact states as well. German secret police Stasi was one of most fearsome and cruel tools of keeping population under control. Soviet troops even invaded Hungary and later former Czechoslovakia when the power started to slip out of local puppet regimes' hands. Soviet KGB penetrated whole fabric of society, not only in Soviet Union, but in other Warsaw Pact states, spreading fear and distrust.

Quarter of a century ago, Soviet Empire collapsed under it's own weight, tearing down the walls that kept numerous nations enslaved for half of a century. Among those lucky ones – 6,5 mio citizens of Baltic States. What started in 1990 on the eastern shores of Baltic sea became a success story of three tiny nations. Now, 25 years later, Russia is starting to tighten its grip around post-soviet countries.

At first the most effective tools were trade, cultural relations and propaganda. However, soft power started to fail. Gazprom's gas and money could no longer hold Ukraine in Russia's sphere of influence. Ukrainians overthrew corrupt Russian backed regime in Maidan revolution. Baltic states with their own liquefied natural gas terminal and successful legal actions against Russian gas behemoth are slipping out of Kremlin's control as well. Weapons and so called volunteers started to cross Ukrainian border to help Donetsk and Luhansk separatists cripple Ukraine's sovereignty. We cannot forget events that took place 7 years ago when Russian troops crossed Georgian border to back breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia that were part of Georgia.

This is the reality Eastern and Central Europe is living in. We have seen Russia fighting it's way to Berlin and further West. We have lived through decades of oppression. We do not want history to repeat itself. However, neither the EU, nor NATO partners in Europe does not see this as an existential problem to them. Trade and personal ties with Russia take the upper hand.