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dipsydoodle

(42,239 posts)
Fri Jun 20, 2014, 09:23 AM Jun 2014

Estonia PM calls for permanent NATO presence as bulwark to Russia

Source: Reuters

(Reuters) - Estonian Prime Minister Taavi Roivas urged NATO on Friday to establish a permanent presence in the Baltic state in response to Russia's actions in Ukraine, telling his allies to "open your eyes and stay awake".

The Western alliance has tripled the number of fighter jets based in the Baltics as part of measures to beef up its defences in eastern Europe following Russia's annexation of Crimea.

The events in eastern Ukraine, where Russian-speaking insurgents using sophisticated weapons threaten to split the country, have put the whole former Soviet bloc region on alert and eager for NATO reassurance.

Asked if he would like to see a permanent mission in Estonia, Roivas told Reuters in an interview: "Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Romania are the border states, and it is only logical that air policing and air defence for example are present on the borders."

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/06/20/us-estonia-nato-idUSKBN0EV18K20140620

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Estonia PM calls for permanent NATO presence as bulwark to Russia (Original Post) dipsydoodle Jun 2014 OP
They are all looking nervously at the Ukies, and ChairmanAgnostic Jun 2014 #1
In normal times, there's no problem with that. Benton D Struckcheon Jun 2014 #2

ChairmanAgnostic

(28,017 posts)
1. They are all looking nervously at the Ukies, and
Fri Jun 20, 2014, 10:01 AM
Jun 2014

hoping it does not happen there.

The Russians and Lithuanians have one bizarre agreement. Russia, under escort, can transport arms, troops, tanks, and more through Lithuania to Russia's only year round open port in Kaliningrad. There have been repeated threats by russian defense leaders to install long range anti-aircraft missiles there, as well as nuclear weapons. They just built a super sophisticated radar defense system.

Benton D Struckcheon

(2,347 posts)
2. In normal times, there's no problem with that.
Sat Jun 21, 2014, 09:59 PM
Jun 2014

But these are no longer normal times.
Supply regions - and under Putin Russia has been permanently, as in for the rest of the lives of everyone reading this, been made into one - tend not to have governments that grant their citizens much freedom and are only corrupt in the normal ways. The only nation that has escaped this curse as far as I can tell is Norway.
Besides a corrupt and autocratic government, that government's incentive now is to direct as much of its people's attention elsewhere as it can, as entering this year, even before Ukraine, economic prospects were flat (see this chart, which is the ruble/dollar exchange rate. Notice it was declining coming into 2014 even before the invasion of Ukraine). That didn't get any better because of this folly; the one bright spot was that there was more foreign direct investment being done and more of it wasn't energy related. But a lot of that came to a screeching halt as a result of Ukraine. The one other advantage, that it was fiscally in good shape, got measurably worse not so much because of sanctions but because people with money got it out of Russia - to the extent they had it there in the first place, anyway (rich people in Russia, as in any autocratically run nation, know they keep their wealth only if they stay on the right side of the government, so naturally they keep as much of their wealth as possible out of that government's reach) - which didn't do their central bank reserves any favors. So the government now has every incentive to keep people from thinking about their current economic situation.
All of which means Lithuania's fears are well-justified. Russia is no longer the USSR; it doesn't have the means to project its power much beyond its immediate neighborhood. But Lithuania falls within its immediate neighborhood, unfortunately.

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