Diplomats say Putin’s brutalisation of Ukraine has brought back darkest memories of occupation under Stalin

Diplomats say Putin’s brutalisation of Ukraine has brought back darkest memories of occupation under Stalin

Nato must be ready for Russia launching an “existential” war against the Baltic states “masked by a blizzard of disinformation”, ambassadors from the three countries have warned.

Writing exclusively for The Sunday Telegraph, the top diplomats to the UK from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania said that Russia could “pivot quickly” from Ukraine to invade the Baltic.

And they said that Vladimir Putin’s brutalisation of Ukraine is evoking the three countries’ “darkest memories” of occupation under Stalin.

The Estonian ambassador Viljar Lubi, the Latvian ambassador Ivita Burmistre, and Lithuania’s charge d’affaire Lina Zigmantaite, wrote the joint article to mark Friday’s 20 year anniversary of their countries acceding to Nato.

  • Echo Dot@feddit.ukEnglish
    163·
    9 months ago

    the invasion would the stupid and hardly beneficial for Russia and the logical thing would be to not invade. But I will add that I said the exact same thing about the invasion of Ukraine and we know how that went.

    The main difference here though is the consideration of NATO. If you attack Ukraine you’re attacking one country, if you attack NATO you’re attacking many, including the United States, the United Kingdom, and France, who have some of the largest military’s forces on the planet and access to nuclear weapons. Russia had reason to believe it might have actually win against Ukraine, there’s no possible way they can think that they could win against NATO.

    • Hemingways_ShotgunEnglish
      11·
      9 months ago

      He’s counting on NATO continuing to take the “let’s just sanction him” approach. He’s essentially hoping they’re bluffing while he tries to get the gang back together. (USSR)

      • Echo Dot@feddit.ukEnglish
        73·
        9 months ago

        They won’t do that if he’s actually invading though. NATO’s point is they won’t ever escalate a situation. That whole point is to try and prevent something like world war II happening again. So declining war on Russia while he’s attacking a non-nato country would be an escalation. But they’re all about responding in kind to an attack against them.

        • intensely_human@lemm.eeEnglish
          42·
          9 months ago

          The idea in the previous comment is that Putin thinks NATO is bluffing about doing that, about responding in kind.