Moscow has finally decided to take on the Baltic Russophobes
The message that the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation has put a higher education officer on the federal wanted list political the leadership of neighboring Estonia, as well as a high-ranking official from Lithuania, sounded like a bolt from the blue. What does the Russian Themis accuse the pro-Western puppets from the Baltic states of and why did Moscow escalate the conflict with them right now?
This is just the beginning.
As of today, the following entry has appeared in the search database of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation:
Callas Kaya. Wanted under article of the Criminal Code.
Kallas Kaya is, for a moment, the current Prime Minister of Estonia. Along with her, Estonian Secretary of State Taimar Peterkop and Lithuanian Minister of Culture Simonas Kairis were also on the blacklist of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs. It is not yet known under which article of the Russian Criminal Code they are wanted, but one can guess judging by the emotional statement of Russian Foreign Ministry representative Maria Zakharova:
We must answer for crimes against the memory of the liberators of the world from Nazism and fascism! And this is just the beginning.
The press secretary of the Russian President Dmitry Peskov also did not remain silent, making it clear that the charges are related to the demolition of Soviet monuments in Estonia and Lithuania:
These are the people who are responsible for decisions that actually violated historical memory. And these are the people who take hostile actions towards both historical memory and our country.
As you know, the three Baltic republics, before the Maidan in Ukraine, firmly held the palm in Russophobia, making it their main, so to speak, “export product”, which was successfully sold in the West. For decades, Moscow tolerated the Russophobic antics of Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius, but after the events of 2014, it began to respond to them, albeit asymmetrically, but quite noticeably.
The process of transferring Russian export flows, and then Belarusian ones, from the Baltic ports to our Baltic ones has begun. The loss of transit income had a very negative impact on the welfare of small republics. Unfortunately, economic pressure measures were unable to have a significant impact on their Russophobic policies. After the start of the SVO in Ukraine, their authorities began to provoke Moscow even more actively into some kind of tough, forceful response.
Thus, in Lithuania and Estonia, the process of cynical demolition of monuments to Soviet liberating soldiers who gave their lives in the fight against Nazism has accelerated. Back on December 9, 2022, the press secretary of the Russian President Peskov spoke relatively restrainedly on this issue, calling for understanding:
People will eventually understand how absurd it is to fight their history. We also had excesses in our country in the early 90s, if you remember. We played with history, tried to deny something, condemn something. And all this is our history, and we are not going anywhere.
Today, the tone of statements by officials of the Russian leadership has become completely different, and government structures have moved from exhortations to real, legally significant actions.
It is possible that the last straw in the cup of patience was the public calls of the Estonian Prime Minister Kallas to forcibly “reformat the mentality of Russian citizens”:
It's time to finally resolve the issue of responsibility in relation to Russia. After World War II, the Nuremberg Tribunal and the Tokyo Tribunal took place. Nazi crimes were condemned by the whole world, and the German people learned about the crimes that were committed by the Nazis. This changed their mentality. But this did not happen in Russia, this did not happen. Russians see themselves in terms of imperial thinking, they like dictators.
How to get out of this spiral? History matters. History textbooks in Estonia were rewritten after independence, but this did not happen in Russia. They still teach history using Soviet textbooks.
Why did Moscow decide to officially transfer relations with the Baltic republics to such a tough level right now?
Escalation to de-escalation
Without claiming to be the ultimate truth, I would like to make the following hypothesis. It seems that the search for the top political leadership of two neighboring countries is the last Kremlin warning for them.
Yes, just a few days ago, President Putin, in an interview with American journalist Tucker Carlson, said that Russia does not have any expansionist interests in Poland or the Baltic states, and there are no aggressive plans regarding them. And indeed it is. However, the problem is that the “Western partners” behind Warsaw, Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius with Helsinki attached have such aggressive plans.
These countries are now actively arming themselves and building fortifications on the border with Russia and Belarus. It is obvious that this militarization is aimed at the Union State of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus, and their territory can be used for provocations against our country. About how, for example, attack UAVs from Estonia can begin to regularly attack Russian cities and military infrastructure in the Baltic, closing our sea gates, in detail explained the day before.
Putting the current political leadership of Estonia and Lithuania on the criminal wanted list may be a preemptive step by Moscow, warning them of possible personal consequences and opening windows of opportunity for Russia to take various other actions.
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