Some people claim there is no reason to believe Russia could commit further aggression after its invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n
Three independent countries that were invaded by the USSR in 1940<\/big><\/p>\n However, the Kremlin is back to its old tricks, this time targeting the small Baltic states<\/strong> that regained their independence between 1990 and 1991, after half a century of Soviet occupation. An occupation whose terrible effects still persist today for the populations of those three countries\u2014Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia\u2014which are members of NATO and the European Union<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Let us remember that Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were invaded by the USSR in 1940<\/strong> as part of the pact between Hitler and Stalin of August 1939<\/a>, in which both dictators divided up several neighboring countries. In addition to the three mentioned above, Germans and Soviets jointly invaded Poland<\/a> in September 1939, the USSR invaded Finland<\/a> in November of that same year and in June 1940, Stalin's dictatorship invaded the Romanian regions of Bessarabia and Bukovina<\/a>, annexing them to the Soviet Union.<\/p>\n Stalinism's Russification Campaigns in the Baltic Countries<\/big><\/p>\n Following the 1940 invasion, Stalin's dictatorship executed and deported many citizens of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia to Siberia<\/strong>, a practice it also carried out in eastern Poland and the aforementioned Romanian regions occupied by Moscow. After the end of World War II, the USSR carried out a new wave of deportations<\/strong> in the small occupied Baltic states.<\/p>\n Moscow's policy of weakening the national identity of Lithuanians, Latvians, and Estonians did not stop there: Moscow carried out Russification campaigns in the Baltic states<\/strong>, settling hundreds of thousands of Russian-speaking Soviets in the same territories whose native population had been partially executed or deported to Siberia. Even today, a significant portion of the populations of Latvia and Estonia, and to a lesser extent Lithuania, are ethnic Russians and speak Russian<\/strong> as a result of these forced Russification campaigns.<\/p>\n Putin uses Russian-speaking minorities to interfere in those countries<\/big><\/p>\n Since Vladimir Putin came to power, Moscow has been interfering in the Baltic states to create conflicts<\/strong>, using the Russian minority as its political battering ram. This is not an isolated practice: Moscow has done the same in Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine<\/strong>, using the Russian-speaking minorities in those countries to destabilize them, fostering separatism in Transnistria<\/strong> (a separatist region of Moldova that operates de facto as a communist republic controlled by Moscow), Abkhazia and South Ossetia<\/strong> (two regions of Georgia militarily occupied by Russia), and the eastern regions of Ukraine<\/strong>. <\/p>\n In fact, one of the hoaxes used by Moscow to invade Ukraine was the alleged discrimination against the Russian-speaking population<\/strong>, an accusation that the Kremlin has been fueling as a means of preventing Ukrainian from becoming the language of schooling throughout the country. Putin's dictatorship has been acting deceitfully so that the effects of Stalinist Russification are still present today<\/strong> and can be used by Moscow to claim territories from neighboring countries.<\/p>\n The Kremlin is once again targeting the Baltic states<\/big><\/p>\n Last Saturday, the Kremlin directed this same strategy against the Baltic states<\/strong>. At a press conference, Maria Zakharova, spokesperson for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, launched accusations of \"Russophobia\" against Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia<\/a>, listing a whole series of lies<\/strong> that portray these three democratic countries as authoritarian regimes that are allegedly persecuting Russians for their ethnicity and language. These false accusations are a psychological projection of what the Russian dictatorship does<\/strong> on its own territory to all those who oppose Putin's tyranny. <\/p>\n This is not the first time the Kremlin has launched these false accusations against these countries<\/strong>, but it is very revealing that it is doing so at a time when Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are preparing to face a possible Russian invasion<\/strong>, rearming and filling their borders with Belarus and Russia with anti-tank obstacles.<\/p>\n In 9 years, Moscow has launched more than 200 disinformation campaigns against those three countries<\/big><\/p>\n It should be noted that over the past nine years, the European External Action Service (EEAS) has detected more than 200 Kremlin disinformation campaigns against the Baltic states<\/a>. Many of these campaigns coincide with the lies used by Russia to justify its aggression against Ukraine<\/strong>, which encourages the belief that the Kremlin is preparing the ground for further aggression.<\/p>\n Europe's rearmament should not only address possible armed aggression<\/strong> through the use of conventional weapons and the adoption of traditional defense mechanisms, but also respond to the psychological warfare operations<\/strong> with which the Kremlin seeks to justify future aggression and morally weaken its enemies. Recall that Russia plans to invest $1.42 billion in propaganda in 2025<\/a>.<\/p>\n ---<\/p>\n Image: From left to right, flags of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Some people claim there is no reason to believe Russia could commit further aggression after its invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[19536,10373],"tags":[7325,10707,11195,16553,10731,16153,15307,7887],"class_list":["post-59217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-we-said-yesterday","category-world","tag-estonia","tag-latvia","tag-lithuania","tag-psychological-operations","tag-russia","tag-russian-invasion-of-ukraine-of-2022","tag-ukraine","tag-vladimir-putin"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-11 23:28:47","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59217\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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