RUTHFULLY YOURS

Estonia and Latvia

Toomas Hendrik Ilves, Estonia’s president between 2006 and 2016, is not known for mincing his words about Russia. Nevertheless, as we drove towards a restaurant amid the refurbished industrial buildings and new waterfront apartments in a neighborhood that is a monument of sorts to Estonia’s astonishingly successful tech sector, it was evident that, had circumstances allowed, he would rather have been talking about the future that this small, determined nation is making for itself than about the latest poisonous eruption from the past.

As Ilves and I finished dinner, one of Estonia’s high-tech entrepreneurs wandered over. What had brought me to the country? “The neighbors, I’m afraid.” “Ah yes.” The neighbors are, by definition, not going away. Nor are they likely to change for the better. Russia’s ruling class seems disinclined to abandon political, imperial, and military principles that, despite brief interludes, have remained fundamentally unchanged for centuries. In discussions in Latvia and Estonia (sadly, there was no time to visit Lithuania), it was emphasized to me more than once that the war in Ukraine was Russia’s war, not just Putin’s. To the extent it can be believed (somewhat), polling in Russia appears to support that thesis, at least up to now. But this is not inconsistent with the argument made by James Sherr, an analyst at Estonia’s respected International Centre for Defence and Security, that “Putin’s views about Ukraine are widely shared, but without him there might have been no war.” Something similar, I suppose, might be said about Germany and Hitler.

Ilves anticipated “a hard road ahead,” as did Sherr, who warned that “there is no safe path through this.” A defense official in Tallinn forecast mounting escalation and saw little chance of a return to peaceful conditions. But, for all that, neither Tallinn nor the Latvian capital, Riga, felt like a city on a precipice. There were no troops in the streets. Restaurants looked to be doing good business; shops were busy and well stocked.

Any burdens that war and sanctions are putting on the Latvian and Estonian economies ought to be manageable. Both (as well as Lithuania) have long since broken from Moscow’s economic sphere, and, following Lithuania’s lead (it has had a floating liquid-natural-gas storage and regasification unit, subtly named “Independence,” as a terminal anchored in place since 2014), are on track, if belatedly, to wean themselves off Russian energy. There will be turbulence, but they have economies healthy enough to cope, as well as sufficient resources to pay for extra military spending and the cost of the influx of what is, in light of their small populations, a relatively large number of Ukrainian refugees.

The most visible signs of the war were Ukrainian flags flying outside public buildings and, less decorously, the posters, placards, and other symbols of protest facing the Russian embassies in Tallinn and Riga. On exiting through his embassy’s front door, Russia’s ambassador to Latvia has to contemplate a gigantic depiction of Putin’s face half-metamorphosed into a skull (some teenagers paused to spit at it as I watched). Nearby, should the ambassador so choose, he can inspect, among numerous treats, varying images of Putin’s head — in a noose, detached by a guillotine, pierced by a bullet, or sporting a familiar toothbrush mustache.

While Tallinn’s picturesque old town was less crowded with tourists than usual for late April (or so it seemed to me), the lingering aftereffects of the pandemic were probably to blame, not fears of Russian tanks. As for the locals, I was told that the under-fifties, confident in the efficacy of NATO’s shield, were not too worried, while older generations, particularly those with sharp memories of the Soviet occupation, were more concerned.

For their part, none of the analysts, politicians, or officials to whom I spoke expected the Russian army to come calling anytime soon. Many of them stressed that an invasion of the Baltic states should not be seen as in some way different because they were “former Soviet republics,” a label they uniformly detest for the way it diminishes both their past and their present, and for its implication that an attack on these lost territories would be a lesser line for Moscow to cross. Any such incursion should, they maintained, simply be regarded as an attack on NATO without any qualification, a gamble, they reckoned, that the Kremlin is still unwilling to take. Moreover, a sizeable portion of the Russian forces (and their equipment) normally based near the borders of the three Baltic states are now in Ukraine, in many cases never to return. Replacing them, it was felt, could take years.

That doesn’t rule out cyber war, although since the devastating cyber onslaught against Estonia that followed the 2007 transfer of the Bronze Soldier, a Soviet war memorial, from central Tallinn to the city’s military cemetery, Estonia has become a leader in cyber-security. It is no coincidence that NATO’s cyber-defense hub is located in that country. To the south, meanwhile, Lithuania’s army of digital “elves” has been combating Russian online disinformation since the annexation of the Crimea. “It’s been busy,” one Estonian who works with them tells me as we talk over the multilayered and sometimes contradictory effects of prolonged exposure to that disinformation.

That weighs in the Baltic, where Estonia has, to use the local terminology, a “Russian-speaking” minority of roughly 25 percent of the population and Latvia maybe 30 percent (the figure is far lower in Lithuania). These are mainly the settlers, or their descendants, who arrived from elsewhere in the USSR during the Soviet occupation, useful then to the Kremlin as a means of adjusting the ethnic balance in its new domains and useful now as “compatriots” whom Putin has pledged to protect. Making matters trickier still is where they are concentrated. Some 35 percent of Tallinn’s inhabitants are Russian-speakers, and the percentage is even higher in Riga. The second-largest city in Latvia (Daugavpils) and the third-largest in Estonia (Narva) are overwhelmingly Russian-speaking and unnervingly close to the Russian frontier: All that separates Narva from Russia’s Ivangorod is a narrow river. Look across and it’s easy to see the cars driving along on the Ivangorod side.

Thanks to a brutal history, a delicate demographic balance, and the overbearing giant next door, relations between Russian-speakers and ethnic Latvians and Estonians were always going to be difficult. And so they have proved to be, as the Balts have tried, with only partial success and often with limited enthusiasm, to restore the national essence of their pre-war states while accommodating the numerically and culturally significant minority the Soviets left behind. The situation has not been made any easier by the degree to which many Russian-speakers still live in what, to revert to the region’s jargon, is a “Russian information space” on television and the Web.

Beyond the Russian language, what has brought them to and kept them in that space is primarily big-budget entertainment, from sports to movies, but it is woven into a mix that includes news — if that’s the word — and propaganda. Since the invasion of Ukraine, the Baltic trio has banned retransmission of various Russian TV channels, as well as access to certain Russian websites via local ISPs. Even free-speech absolutists should not find it too hard to appreciate why. Meanwhile Estonia is putting more money into its (heavily outspent) Russian-language public broadcasting, with some positive results.

It’s impossible to know how far Latvia and Estonia can rely on “their” Russian-speakers. They are far better integrated than they were (low bar), and the relationship is no crude binary consisting of ethnic Estonians/Latvians on one side and Russian-speakers on the other. Loyalties are affected by class, location, age, and so on. And even those who might back what Russia is doing in Ukraine are unlikely to be enthused at the prospect of a Putin-style liberation. After all, Mariupol is — or was — a primarily Russian-speaking city. But there are still probably enough potential malcontents in Latvia and Estonia that if the Kremlin wants to stir up some trouble, it might succeed. That’s all the more reason why, at a time when tensions might be more elevated than usual, it would be wise to hit the pause button on the long-running monument wars (which included the relocation of the Bronze Soldier). Some ethnic-Latvian politicians have had Riga’s monstrous Victory Memorial to the Soviet army in their sights for a while. “A monument to the occupation,” one MP told me. He’s right, but now is not the moment for this fight, especially when Putin is attempting to enlist the ghosts of the Great Patriotic War on his side. “It’s better to let these things rot,” observed an Estonian as we gazed at another insulting relic, the Maarjamäe Memorial Complex, slowly decaying on the Baltic coast.

Calm should not be confused with complacency. If Putin prevails in Ukraine, an emboldened Kremlin will be looking in the direction of the Baltic, nominally to help those supposedly oppressed “compatriots” living there, but with a broader objective in mind. If Moscow can somehow get away with subjugating Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, it will have demonstrated that, in their case, NATO’s much-vaunted collective defense cannot be relied upon — and if that’s true for them, who might be next? It would be a demonstration that could tear the alliance apart.

The Baltic leaderships know what might, one day, be at stake. For their size, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia have sent Ukraine a remarkable amount of matériel for reasons both moral and — as a method of forward defense — practical. Meanwhile, recruitment has surged for the Kaitseliit, the Estonian Defense League, a force roughly analogous to the U.S. National Guard and maintained in a high level of readiness. Latvia is mulling a form of conscription (the other two Baltic states already have mandatory military service — in Lithuania’s case reintroduced after the annexation of the Crimea — and the reserve capabilities that come with it). All three countries have surpassed the NATO defense-spending target of 2 percent of GDP, and all three now are aiming at approximately 2.5 percent.

Another change that has followed the invasion has been strong Baltic pressure (much of it from Estonia’s impressive prime minister, Kaja Kallas, who has found her voice in this crisis) to supplement the three countries’ NATO tripwire, which currently consists of multinational battle groups in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, totaling some 4,000 troops in all, and was set up after the earlier Russian aggression in Ukraine.

But if the Russians risked tearing through that tripwire, despite what would undoubtedly be a fierce defense, the Baltic states (with their combined population of only around 6 million) would swiftly be overrun, leaving them with little alternative, regardless of any insurgency (something not unknown in these parts) other than to await rescue. After the massacres in Bucha and other parts of Ukraine, there are no illusions about what even a brief Russian occupation would mean. Thus the suggestion made to me, echoing that made by the three Baltic premiers last month, that as much as a division of NATO forces (as well as added equipment) should be placed in each Baltic country. This, for both military and political reasons, would bolster NATO’s deterrence as well as underline the key message that the alliance has no second-tier members: Its governing principle continues to be all for one and one for all.

Some in NATO’s leadership may balk at leaving such a force potentially isolated in what even Kallas recognizes is a “NATO peninsula.” Geography is what it is, but if Finland and probably Sweden, as most of the people to whom I spoke (eagerly) expected, joined the alliance, the risk of being cut off would drop dramatically. Then again, even on a fast track, admitting the Nordic pair into the alliance, which requires the unanimous approval of all existing members (an opportunity for mischief-making by Moscow), will take a while, opening up a dangerous gap that the U.S., the British, and others appear ready to fill with interim security guarantees of some kind.

When it came to the topic of Russia’s war, all those I met agreed, unsurprisingly, that it had gone badly awry. Unexpectedly ferocious Ukrainian resistance had thwarted Russian plans for a quick takeover of Kyiv. Highly motivated and increasingly well furnished with Western weaponry, the Ukrainian military has transformed what was meant to be a blitzkrieg into a slugfest in which the invaders, weakened by the corrosive effects of corruption, inadequate training, poor organization, and low morale, by no means have the upper hand.

What next? Opinions differed. Some saw a prolonged war of attrition ahead, others an imminent crisis for either Russia or Ukraine in the Donbas. But while almost everyone had some idea of what a Russian victory might look like — a broken Ukraine — visualizing the shape that a Russian failure to prevail might take seemed trickier. Perhaps a consolidation of the gains of 2014, sweetened maybe by a land bridge to the Crimea, would be enough for Putin to declare enough of a victory to pause the conflict for now, but the operative word is “pause.” In due course, Russia would be back for more, even if Ukraine had reluctantly accepted the new status quo (most likely because of pressure to do so by a weary and impatient West seduced by the notion of “peace,” however shabby, a fear of at least one Estonian official). Whether Russia is beaten back to its position at the beginning of this year or makes some modest gains, this would, at best, be a cease-fire of uncertain duration, while a clear win would, as discussed above, open the door to Russian adventurism elsewhere. An outright Russian rout was typically ruled out, once or twice at the point in the meeting that tactical nukes entered the discussion.

Deepening the gloom, hopes that either sanctions, battlefield setbacks, or both would bring Putin down were dismissed by my interlocutors as wishful thinking. But even if Putin were to be overthrown, or, for that matter, to succumb to ill health (while I was in the Baltics, an unspecified blood cancer had taken the lead over Parkinson’s in the speculation over the disease that might be bringing Russia’s dictator down), his eventual successor would, the best guesses went, most likely come from a coterie that broadly shares his views.

“How many times during this visit,” I was asked, “have you been reminded that we told you so?” Balts were sounding the alarm about Putin’s Russia even before the 2008 war with Georgia, but were too often ignored, a disastrous mistake: Russo–German pipelines, uh, came up in quite a few of my meetings. The lesson? If Moscow is playing a long game — and it seems to be — NATO must do all it can to incorporate its Baltic members’ profound understanding of Russia into its planning. Downplaying their concerns will no longer do.