Paul
Goble
Staunton, April 7 – In the wake of
the Crimean crisis, a senior editor of Russia’s Regnum news agency says, the
three Baltic countries have become even more geopolitically significant than
they were for both Russia and the West, but because of its own policy failures,
Russia has lost any significant influence in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania for
the foreseeable future.
In an analysis posted online
yesterday, Igor Pavlovsky, the editor in chief for the North-West office of
Regnum based in St. Petersburg, first outlines why the three Baltic countries
have gained in importance and then describes why in each case Moscow’s efforts
to use “soft” power have failed (regnum.ru/news/polit/1787435.html).
Pavlovsky lists four reasons why the
three are now more geopolitically important than they were before Crimea: they
are NATO members on Russia’s border, two of them have “a critical mass” of
Russian citizens and persons without citizenship, they are “strategic transit
paths” for Russian and Belarusian goods, and they thus affect Russia’s energy
security.
But his more interesting comments
arise from his devastating critique of Moscow’s failure to gain influence
there. As the Crimean crisis showed, Russian diplomacy in the Baltic region has
been “absolutely ineffective,” and Moscow’s support for ethnic Russians there
has “also turned out to be a failure.”
Russia has not only been unable to
expand its influence among the three, but “today in the Baltic countries,”
Pavlovsky continues, “we can observe the growth of anti-Russian attitudes, and
this is not always connected with our actions in Ukraine or in any other
country,” as some suggest in attempts at self-justification.
Instead, he says, “it is necessary
to recognize that today the political space of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia
has been lost by us,” that “not one politician who has declared his sympathy to
Russia or is simply neutral about our country will be able to come to power in
these countries,” despite business and even personal ties.
According to Pavlovsky, “the
examples of Nil Ushakov [in Riga] and Edgar Savisaar [in Tallinn]” are only
exceptions that prove this rule.
The Ukrainian
crisis has clearly shown “the inability of Russian structures to work with the
national mass media” in the Baltic countries. The situation is especially bad
from Russia’s point of view in Lithuania, which lacks a large non-Lithuanian
media, but it is not good in Latvia or Estonia either.
In all three countries, at present,
Russia must deal with the fact that there is “a clearly formulated image of
Russia as an aggressor.” And that
anti-Russian rhetoric, which serves the current national elites well, will only
intensify in the run-up to elections for the national governments and the
European Parliament.
“Russia is not in a position to
affect this process” in a positive way, Pavlovsky says.
As a result, the Regnum editor
continues, “Moscow must prepare itself for the growth of popularity of
nationalist parties in the Baltics and the sharp reduction in its possibilities
for maneuver in measures and declarations in defense of the humanitarian rights
of compatriots because from now on [these] will be treated exclusively as an
attempt to ‘revise borders.’”
“At the same time,” he says, there
is likely to be a radicalization of opinion among Russian compatriots, “who
will extrapolate the Crimean situation to their own countries,” a view that
will present real “challenges” for Moscow’s policy there. Unfortunately,
Pavlovsky continues, the Russian foreign ministry “does not have an adequate
answer” for these.
Adding to this challenge are the
likelihood of a strengthening of NATO’s presence in the Baltic countries, who
are seeking “real ‘security guarantees’” from the West and increasing
restrictions on the transit of Russian oil, gas and other exports. Any effort by
Moscow to discuss this will be responded to in “an extremely aggressive fashion”
by Baltic media and elites.
Lithuania is the leader among the
Baltic countries in anti-Russian rhetoric, Pavlovsky says. That is because of
the upcoming presidential elections there, the failure of several major
infrastructure projects, government control over or influence on the national
media, and the increasing tendency among Lithuanians to ignore their ties with
Russia.
Latvia, Pavlovsky says, “as a result
of its geographic, national and territorial specifics cannot allow itself” to
be as Russophobic as Lithuania. “Nevertheless,” the amount of what he calls “anti-Russian
hysteriais quite high and will last at a minimum until the elections to the
Latvian Seima which will take place in the fall.”
At the same time and partially in
response, “the large ethnic Russian community” in Latvia will certainly seek to
defend its rights and to make demands. What is needed, Pavlovsky says, is for
Russia “to immediately formulate a clear position relative to ‘support’ or ‘non-support’
of this trend and to give answers to the questions of the ‘compatriots’
movement as a whole.
And in a backhanded way, Pavlovsky
makes reference to an issue that some in Latvia fear Moscow might use as it has
used the ethnic Russians in Crimea – Latgalian separatism. The Regnum editor says that Latvians are so
afraid of that possibility that they won’t allow it to be discussed in the
media even though many are thinking about it.
Estonia, “like the other countries
of the region,” the Regnum editor says, “occupies in public a quite harsh
position regarding Russia.” But the
process of forming a new government, fears about new economic problems, and
memories of the Bronze Soldier controversy of 2007 are making “issues of ‘opposing
the aggression of Russia’ not as significant as in Lithuania.”
Given this pattern, Pavlovsky says, “if
Moscow does not draw corresponding lessons from the events in Ukraine, then
Russia will remain for a long time to come in a situation in which its interests
will be ignored in this strategically important region,” one in which Russia’s
opponents can “artificially create” chaos on its borders.
By describing the situation in
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in this way, Pavlovsky is not suggesting that
Moscow accept it but rather insisting that the Kremlin recognize that it has a
problem in the Baltics and take steps to change it. What those steps might be
will deserve the closest possible attention.
No comments:
Post a Comment