Will Russia invade the Baltic states?

2018 marks the 100th anniversary of the independence of Baltic states, Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia. These three northern European states are known as Baltic states because of their restriction to the Baltic Sea, but it was the other border with its neighbour that made independence so much desired and war: Imperial Russia.

In 2018, Baltic countries are independent nations. But anxiety again feels, because Russia is gathering its muscles in the region.

The question here is: Will the 100th anniversary of these countries' independence be the moment for celebration, for increased tensions, or for both?

First, consider some history.

As World War I reached its peak in 1918, empires were falling everywhere, including the Russian Empire.

In the midst of chaos, many countries were born, including Baltic nations. Lithuania declared independence on February 16, 1918, followed by Estonia on February 24th. Latvia, meanwhile, waited longer, and declared its independence in November. But it was a few weeks ago that her neighbor, Soviet Russia, conquered Latvia.

As the Russian Empire collapsed, this led to the October Revolution. That revolution, led by Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks, established the Russian Soviet Republic, which would later be known as the USSR.

And during World War II, the Baltic states were again occupied, first by the USSR and then by Nazi Germany, all over again by the Soviet Union.

So the situation remained until the fall of the USSR in the early 1990s. The Baltics became free again, but with the constant danger from Russia, and rightly, consider 20th century occupation patterns and even earlier.

One of the major steps these countries took to combat the danger occurred in 2004, when they officially became part of NATO.

This was not easily expected in Moscow. Russia has opposed the presence of ballistic sites in Nato during the 1990s. In fact, in 1997 at the Helsinki summit, Russian President Boris Yeltsin tried to make a “gene deal” with US President Bill Clinton that NATO would not allow these states to become part of it.

But Clinton had refused, and years later when George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin were leaders of the respective countries, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia joined the Alliance.

At the time, Putin had indicated that he was more willing to work with NATO and that the membership of Baltic countries in Natto would not upset him much.

But this changed a little later, and seeing that some of the closest neighbors had moved into the mighty Western military alliance, Russia had become more aggressive.

And with that aggression in mind, recent events give the Baltic states reason to worry.

When Russia invaded Ukraine and annexed Crime in 2014, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia were on alert. NATO added military exercises to the Baltic region as a signal to Russia that this region was protected.

And in recent years, Russian aggression has reached its peak.

It was August 2008, during the Olympics in Beijing, when Russia attacked Georgia, preventing it from regaining the regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

News that the two countries were at war came just one day after the opening ceremony in Beijing. The leader of the Russian Olympic team had called Georgian President <x0 mentally ill>” and the International Olympic Committee took action against it.

It was February 2014 when Russia invaded Crime three days after the end of the Sochi Olympic Games.

The Russian-Georgian conflict had intensified months before August 2008, similar to the situation in Ukraine dating back to November 2013.

In fact, some scholars believe that international attention to the Olympics in Russia had led Putin to wait before becoming more aggressive toward Ukraine, while others have thought he acted immediately after the Games so that he in part would draw attention to financial corruption in Sochi.

But back to the current situation in Baltic.

Any Russian conflict in the region is multi-traditional and based on a combination of different factors.

A very important factor is the way Russia views the treatment of the ethnic Russian population in Baltic countries. When the Soviet Union was divided and Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia once again became independent, a complicated question of citizenship was raised.

Lithuania has one of the most liberal policies and has guaranteed citizenship to anyone living there during the time of Independence, while Estonia and Latvia have set complicated rules that meant that ethnic Russians had to submit to history and language tests before being granted passports.

Governments wanted local Russian - speaking people to testify that they could fly Latvian or Estonianly which many saw as a sign of discrimination.

To date, some ethnic Russians living in Baltic have said they feel like second-class citizens, and Putin has publicly said it is in Russia's purpose to protect them.

It was Russia's pretext to move towards Crime, which was an autonomous republic within Ukraine with an ethnic Russian population.

So, it's not surprising that ballistics are nervous and now things are getting even more tense.

On February 5th, Lithuania's president said Russia had just deployed several medium-range missiles along its border. Perhaps even more disturbing for Lithuania was when Russia publicly accepted such a thing that could be another attempt to deceive Nato and gather muscles in that region.

None of this means Putin will invade Baltic. Maybe it's only about how much you want to raise tensions among NATO members.

But after 100 years of being transmitted with a number of different hits, attention for 2018 must be moved to this section.

Translated from Periscope