Speaking to a group of students (I think yesterday), Russian president Vladimir Putin made it clear that he has again been looking at whatever passes for history books in the Kremlin these days:
“During the war with Sweden, Peter the Great didn’t conquer anything, he took back what had always belonged to us, even though all of Europe recognised it as Sweden’s. It seems now it’s our turn to get our lands back [smiling]”.
Interestingly (if that’s the word), Putin singled out Narva, which is in the far east of Estonia, just across a narrow river from Russia, a city that Peter the Great ultimately got “back” after defeating Sweden in the Great Northern War (1700-21), along with the rest of modern Estonia and most of modern Latvia.
Narva developed around a castle built by the Danes in the 13th century (history in this part of the world in complicated) and was later controlled by the Teutonic knights, then Sweden (with a brief interlude under Russia in the 16th century) until Peter the Great took it on the second attempt (the first didn’t go so well). To suggest that Narva was something that Peter had just taken “back” is absurd: The first Russian interlude lasted a little more than 20 years.
When Estonia won its independence in 1918, Narva, which had been part of the imperial Russian Governate of Estonia, became the easternmost city in the newly independent country, as it did again in 1991.
Needless to say, an attempt to take Narva, which was “transformed” into an overwhelmingly Russian-speaking city after the Soviets reconquered Estonia in 1944 (and still is today) would be a direct attack on a NATO country, meaning that the collective defense provisions contained in Article 5 of the NATO treaty should apply.
As so often with Putin, his bizarre history lesson can be read as idle musing (his tone was relaxed) or a quiet threat. Given where the Russian leader’s eccentric view of Ukraine’s past has led, now would be a good time to demonstratively thicken the NATO tripwire in Estonia. Visiting Latvia and Estonia in late April for NR, I was repeatedly told that Putin’s attempt to create a Greater Russia would not stop with Ukraine, and this is another sign that that may well be the case. The prime ministers of the three Baltic states have called for something stronger than a tripwire to be put in place in their countries, specifically one NATO division in each of the trio. Deterrence works, and their presence would substantially reduce the chance that Putin would try his luck in the Baltics. It would be a good investment.