Paul
Goble
Staunton, November 21 – In the BBC
interview in which he said Moscow wants “a 100 percent guarantee” that Ukraine
will not become a member of NATO, Vladimir Putin’s press secretary also said
that if radical nationalists came to power in Riga and if Brussels recognized
that as it did in Ukraine, then “Latvian citizens of Russian origin would rise
in revolt.”
Dmitry Peskov’s remarks about Latvia
have attracted less attention than his comments about Ukraine, but they may be
even more dangerous because they suggest that Moscow has worked out a scenario
under the terms of which it might create a situation in a current NATO country
and then exploit it.
Given that Moscow used its
unilateral description of what happened at the time of the Maidan as an
anti-constitutional and anti-democratic coup to justify its moves first in Crimea
and then in the Donbas, Peskov’s words suggest that at least some in the
Kremlin are thinking about using the same strategy in Latvia.
And that in turn means that Moscow
could very well portray any changes in Latvia, however democratically arrived
at, as constituting the change in government that it might then invoke to
support a rising by ethnic Russians there and a subsequent “hybrid”
intervention by the Russian government in support of them.
“If someone organizes a government coup
in Latvia and then Brussels as it did [in Ukraine] recognizes this coup, there
will be a serious danger,” Peskov said. “Each country must be very careful,
each country must defend its interests in such a way that it will not permit
this to happen” (bbc.co.uk/russian/international/2014/11/141119_peskov_bbc_interview).
In
taking note of Peskov’s words, Latvian foreign ministry spokesman Karlis
Eichenbaums said that it is clear that “logical thought and clarity of
expression were not the qualities taken into consideration” when Putin selected
Peskov as his spokesman (rus.delfi.lv/news/daily/latvia/peskov-v-latvii-vozmozhen-gosudarstvennyj-perevorot.d?id=45244378).
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