Paul
Goble
Staunton, January 22 – The situation
in the Baltic region militarily is “quite stable,” Andis Kudors says, not only
because NATO has beefed up its defenses there but because Vladimir Putin is
interested in the first instance in maintaining the status quo in Russia,
something that would be threatened by an attack on Estonia, Latvia and
Lithuania.
The director of the Riga Center for
Research on the Politics of Eastern Europe says that at the same time, Putin is
heavily engaged in an information war against the three, a war that they have
not yet found a way to respond to effectively (newsader.com/42334-latyshskiy-yekspert-o-rossiyskoy-propa/).
As far as information security is
concerned, Kudors continues, the situation is “far from stable. I would even
say that we here are in an asymmetrical situation.” That is because Russia is making
use of “the classical methods of strategic communication” and the Baltic countries
and their Western allies have not come up with an adequate response.
Moscow seeks to set one group of
people in each Baltic country against another and to set the Baltic states into
opposition with Europe. “In Latvia,” he
says, “Russians are put in opposition to Latvians, and conservative values to
liberal ones. In Lithuania, in tis sense, ‘the Polish card’ is used. And in
Estonia, the strategy is similar to the one used in Latvia.”
But at the same time, the Latvian
analyst says, there are important differences in Moscow’s approaches to Estonia
and Latvia, reflecting differences that arise from geography and history and
from Moscow’s very different approach to Latvia during the period of occupation
than the one it was able to apply in Estonia.
In Riga during Soviet times, Moscow
set up the headquarters of the Baltic Military District. As a result, he says, “Moscow did everything in
order that it could be certain that Latvia would be genuinely Soviet.
Therefore, there was greater pressure on Latvians and they were to a greater
extent dragged into Soviet discourse.”
“Even in Soviet times,” Kudors continues,
Estonians felt commonalties and ties with Scandinavia. This helped them oppose
the occupation and preserve their identity. In Latvia, for example, it was
impossible to watch foreign TV channels while in Estonia, residents along the
coast, including those in Tallinn could watch Finnish television.”
“This is only one example,” he says;
“but it is extremely important.”
Moreover, Kudors says, “the Russians
in Tallinn had greater motivation to study Estonian because Estonians to a
lesser degree spoke Russian during the Soviet occupation. In Latvia, the
situation is different. The majority of
Latvians speak Russian well, especially in Riga. Therefore, we still feel a
strong information influence from Russia.”
Despite its efforts, “the Kremlin is
not capable to remain our strategic priorities which are in the West or convert
us into a buffer zone like some kind of Armenia or Belarus; but it has
information instruments which do work,” just as Soviet propaganda couldn’t
change the basic orientation of Western countries but could create “definite
problems.”
But there is another aspect to this
problem that few take note of, Kudors says. Russia’s information war forces the
Baltic governments to focus on it rather than devoting their energies to
resolve basic domestic problems. That too is exactly the kind of thing Moscow
hopes for and then exploits.
Many in Europe are beginning to
understand just how dangerous this information war is, but many do not yet take
that into account in their policies. And
they do not want to acknowledge just how cynical Russian policy is, committed
to no principles except the spread of chaos, the Latvian analyst concludes.
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