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When I was based in Moscow in the mid 1990s, I also had a pied-a-terre office in Riga [LVA], so in a dated fashion I am somewhat familiar with that city. The building was gone - it had been the Latvian Konsomol HQ - and replaced by something very mundane: but its twin on the opposite corner is still standing, so you get the idea.
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| Site of Drew's office: back then it looked like its twin on the left |
In all three countries, Russian can still be heard spoken (far more in Riga than anywhere else) but support for Ukraine is very great. In May, Putin took powers to use the army to “protect Russian citizens” abroad and appealed to the UN Court of Justice to demand the Baltic states, particularly Latvia, be held to account for “infringing on the rights of Russians”. The sabre-rattling is there for all to hear.
Well, one of his massive strategic errors was to treat so very badly those parts of the 'pro Russian' Donbas he seized in 2014: you have to be an extremely Russophile Russian-speaker to want the same for your own region. In the lovely university town of Tartu [EST] a museum attendant advised me to keep my (modest) knowledge of Russian to myself.
But could the Baltics be defended? It's perfect tank country, flat as a pancake: the highest 'mountain', Suur Munamägi [EST] is only 1,000 ft. The population is sparse, and declining in each country[1]. The first is true of both Sweden and Finland, of course, and nobody mistakes them for a pushover. But defensively their geographical advantages are great. The Baltics by contrast have a hideously long land border with Russia / Belarus; far less defensive depth; the anomalous bastion-state of Kaliningrad to their south; and something of a fifth column, however small, in each country. In terms of the usual Russian strategy - a lightning land-grab, promptly fortified and never to be returned, with rachet-increments planned thereafter - only the full force of NATO could offer protection. And that means more than just a plausible strong Polish counter-thrust from the south and some Ukrainian drone-warfare savvy. Yes, we saw NATO troops and aircraft everywhere, but not in vast numbers.
Frankly, 'defence' here means an exceptionally fast and large-scale counter-mobilisation during a buildup period[2], plus a credible nuclear deterrent: sanctions have already been pretty much maxxed out. If Putin survives another decade in his present frame of mind, and if he doesn't believe our red lines (we've never believed his), there's little hope.
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As if to reinforce these gloomy thoughts, two weeks ago the F16s and Typhoons were circling Vilnius [LTU] as we arrived and the airport was briefly closed. At midnight a day later, up on our phones flashed a (Lithuanian) government alert message - 'Find safe place'. The drone in question was promptly shot down and the all-clear given; but there were squads of soldiers on the street the next morning.
ND
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[1] Also declining in Russia, of course - and most everywhere else in Eastern Europe.
[2] And who else in Europe believed the very specific US / UK intelligence warnings in 2021-22? Blinkered hope reigns eternal.
9 comments:
"Can we hope that a Burnham - Miliband government will contribute meaningfully to strengthening the West's collective position?"
It's the way you tell 'em.
Perhaps it is time to revisit peacocks, specifically the blue variety.
A mad(m) weapon born of desperation, and very much to be used as a last resort, but such a thing might give Putin enough of a pause that the collective West gets it's act together in the meantime.
CH
LOL
But with great respect, as I keep pointing out, what position is the UK in to contribute meaningfully?
The UK/EU position is strategically and economically idiotic. We followed the US, whose State Department was full of people who thought Fiddler On The Roof was a documentary, in operation "weaken Russia as much as we can while looting her", and cut off ourselves from cheap energy, while China is eating our lunch and our companies, burning coal and gas like there's no tomorrow to make our solar panels and wind turbines. Oh, and our cars. And everything else.
I find unendurable the sense of our country falling
into the power, into the orbit and influence of China, and of our existence becoming dependent upon their good will or pleasure. It is to prevent that that I have tried my best to urge the maintenance of every economic bulwark of defence – first, the provision of energy at prices which make manufacturing industry viable; secondly, the maintenance and development of a modern manufacturing industry encompassing both heavy industry and modern electronics ; and thirdly, the gathering together of the collective strength of many nations, in order to gather together forces at any rate to restrain the onward movement of this power. It has all been in vain. Every position has been successively undermined and abandoned on specious and plausible excuses. The fact is that our capitaiists - and leaders like Clinton and David Camoron - were so seduced by the visions of profitable Chinese markets that they were easy prey. To defeat the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill.
Given that at the moment Russia are reporting weekly advances of 500 metres here, 200 metres there, I'm not sure they'll be needed, and I'm not sure either the Poles or the Germans would fancy them anyway.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Peacock
Poland was occupied by the Soviets for 45 years, but at the end of that time was still recognisably Polish and full of Poles. 70 years after the British victory neither London, Birmingham or Manchester are English cities.
"appealed to the UN Court of Justice to demand the Baltic states, particularly Latvia, be held to account for “infringing on the rights of Russians”. The sabre-rattling is there for all to hear."
Isn't that because Latvia is closing down all education and broadcasting in Russian, spoken as a native language by a hefty chunk of the population? Who exactly is rattling sabres?
https://carnegieendowment.org/russia-eurasia/politika/2026/09/latvia-russian-parliamentary-parties
https://www.economist.com/europe/2026/01/08/latvia-is-needlessly-alienating-its-russian-speakers
Lets take energy first from that broad brush “analysis”. Industrial power at US- or French-nuclear-like prices is a prerequisite for chemicals, metals, ceramics, data centres and the like. Intermittent capacity without enough firm generation and interconnectors produces exactly the price spikes energy-intensive plants cannot survive. But you made the counterargument yourself: the UK does not have a US-like fossil fuel resource so would depend on energy imports. If dependence on imports from China (or elsewhere) is bad, then so is dependance on “cheap” energy imports from Russia. I’m all for more nuclear power but France is living off the fat of the land somewhat, given the age of its fleet and enormous (and not reflected in current pricing) replacement costs.
Manufacturing resilience is not GDP share fetishism. You do not need 1970s employment shares. You do need process industry, machine tools, power electronics and the ability to surge production in a crisis. The UK kept the high-end tail and hasn’t the scale to take over much of the middle. If you want to increase the size of the mid-market (lower margin) share, what are you proposing to reduce accordingly? People who state problems while not fleshing out solutions (including their trade-offs) aren’t being honest.
China policy is a diversification strategy, not siege. Full decoupling is a fantasy for a mid-sized open economy like the UK. Concentration caps, allied refining, stockpiles, and not building critical grid kit with a single-country remote kill-switch are the adult version of your “restrain the onward movement” type appeal.
And Russia policy and China policy are different problems. Using Ukraine sanctions as the magic wand explanation for the UK’s deindustrialisation skips 25 years of energy and trade policy that predates 2022 — and feigns incomprehension as to why that policy happened.
The only thing I can add (apart from whacking our usual Anonymous friend’s “why oh why oh why can’t we just solve all our problems by buying Russian gas?” missive above) is:
The three Baltic countries (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) have a combined area of about 175,100 km². Donbas, in the usual geopolitical sense of Donetsk Oblast plus Luhansk Oblast, covers 53,201 km². So the Baltics are larger by roughly 122,000 km² — about 3.3 times the size of Donbas (or ~229% bigger).
Given they are better defended (I’d quibble about how some fairly useful enhancements have been made to the NATO forward positions since 2022 — and the lack of naivety in those countries compared to pre-invasion Ukraine) I’d wonder just what the cost would be to Russia were it to attempt to take them — given how progress seems to have pretty much stalled in the Donbas with an enormous looking investment requirement to fully capture it? Geography helps, but only up to a point — Poland is right next door to Lithuania, Estonia has large areas of swamp, post-accession by Sweden and Finland to NATO change the Baltic Sea calculus (etc.)
I addressed this issue when I pointed out that Russian weekly advances are 500m here, 200m there. A long time to get to NATO frontiers at that rate.
"Using Ukraine sanctions as the magic wand explanation for the UK’s deindustrialisation skips 25 years of energy and trade policy that predates 2022 — and feigns incomprehension as to why that policy happened."
I refuse to believe that your comprehension is as poor as it appears from that travesty precis. I'm not at all sure that you aren't being dishonest.
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