Russia and the Baltic states

[100SRV]

A story in the Telegraph popped up on my Google news feed about Russian ambitions to take control of the Baltic Sea. Presumably the advantage to them is a Western all-season series of ports. Have I missed anything else?

[KAgantua]

Have you missed anything else, er yeah, history of Russia/ SU, WWII, WWI.... Cold war?

Yeah they definitley want to take them... its more about access to warm water ports and lack of choke points for their Navy.
Russian federation - biggest country in the world, Soviet Union - biggest country in the whole of (Known) history.

Both have kind of stty geography.

[M1AGM]

There was a documentary on netflix or similar a few weeks ago about Putin. His career was quite interesting. As a junior member of the russian secret police he was stationed in East Germany around the fall of the wall and the breakup of the soviet block that followed. According to the programme, those events had a big impact on Putin as he (probably along with others) felt that Russia has been let down by its leaders and was made to look weak, instead of stamping down hard on the pro democracy movements across the baltic states and elsewhere, Russia allowed them to break away. Putin has always seen that a huge betrayal to mother Russia and has wanted to re-establish the cold war Russian controlled territories for decades. The encroachment of NATO (despite Russia being originally told that NATO would not expand east) has triggered him into action. He wants his legacy to be the repositioning of Russian power back to the cold war lines. As in history, stuff repeats, this feels like how expansionist Germany got itself going in the 1930s by picking off the low hanging fruit (in this case Ukraine, although not quite so low hanging as they hoped) before going for the full out push across the region which in this case would be the baltic states.

[loafer123]

100SRV said:

A story in the Telegraph popped up on my Google news feed about Russian ambitions to take control of the Baltic Sea. Presumably the advantage to them is a Western all-season series of ports. Have I missed anything else?

Russia also has ambitions to take control of Ukraine, in the same way that I have ambitions to buy a private jet.

[FourWheelDrift]

Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia are all in NATO. Along with newer members Finland and Sweden.

More empty threats from Russia.

[Electro1980]

M1AGM said:

despite Russia being originally told that NATO would not expand east

Except no such agreement was ever made. At best oral contracts are not worth the paper they are written on. Any claim by Russia about this is nothing more than an attempt to justify a land grab of politically and economically valuable land.

[Wacky Racer]

M1AGM said:

There was a documentary on netflix or similar a few weeks ago about Putin. His career was quite interesting. As a junior member of the russian secret police he was stationed in East Germany around the fall of the wall and the breakup of the soviet block that followed. According to the programme, those events had a big impact on Putin as he (probably along with others) felt that Russia has been let down by its leaders and was made to look weak, instead of stamping down hard on the pro democracy movements across the baltic states and elsewhere, Russia allowed them to break away. Putin has always seen that a huge betrayal to mother Russia and has wanted to re-establish the cold war Russian controlled territories for decades. The encroachment of NATO (despite Russia being originally told that NATO would not expand east) has triggered him into action. He wants his legacy to be the repositioning of Russian power back to the cold war lines. As in history, stuff repeats, this feels like how expansionist Germany got itself going in the 1930s by picking off the low hanging fruit (in this case Ukraine, although not quite so low hanging as they hoped) before going for the full out push across the region which in this case would be the baltic states.

That sums it up perfectly.

[dvs_dave]

loafer123 said:

100SRV said:

A story in the Telegraph popped up on my Google news feed about Russian ambitions to take control of the Baltic Sea. Presumably the advantage to them is a Western all-season series of ports. Have I missed anything else?

Russia also has ambitions to take control of Ukraine, in the same way that I have ambitions to buy a private jet.

Indeed. Russia/Putin can have as many ambitions as they like. Trouble is they also need the wherewithal to back those ambitions up. They demonstrably don’t have anything like what’s required, economically, militarily, or politically.

[MC Bodge]