Russia Continues to Test Baltic Nations

A month or so after the Russians occupied Crimea in 2014 and started their war in Ukraine’s east, I was in Riga, the Latvian capital. Naturally enough, people were alarmed by signs that Russia was again on the march, although reassured by the protection offered by Latvia’s NATO membership. I asked one Latvian official (an ethnic Russian, as it happens) what it was like to have Russia next door. He replied that the key to understanding Putin was to think of him as a petulant and badly behaved teenager who likes to provoke, prod, and see what he can get away with. As I wrote back then:

Now, of course, Russia is engaged in full-scale war in Ukraine. However, Moscow was never likely to stop testing the Baltics, and it has not. A few months ago, there was the “mysterious” episode in which a gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia was damaged (just in time for winter) as were two telecommunications cables, one between Sweden and Estonia, the other between Finland and Estonia. Possibly the culprit was a Chinese ship, but if it was, the best guess is that it was acting as a proxy for its Russian ally/vassal.

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Andrew Stuttaford

Andrew Stuttaford is the editor of National Review's Capital Matters.

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A month or so after the Russians occupied Crimea in 2014 and started their war in Ukraine’s east, I was in Riga, the Latvian capital. Naturally enough, people were alarmed by signs that Russia was again on the march, although reassured by the protection offered by Latvia’s NATO membership. I asked one Latvian official (an ethnic Russian, as it happens) what it was like to have Russia next door. He replied that the key to understanding Putin was to think of him as a petulant and badly behaved teenager who likes to provoke, prod, and see what he can get away with. As I wrote back then:

Now, of course, Russia is engaged in full-scale war in Ukraine. However, Moscow was never likely to stop testing the Baltics, and it has not. A few months ago, there was the “mysterious” episode in which a gas pipeline between Finland and Estonia was damaged (just in time for winter) as were two telecommunications cables, one between Sweden and Estonia, the other between Finland and Estonia. Possibly the culprit was a Chinese ship, but if it was, the best guess is that it was acting as a proxy for its Russian ally/vassal.