{"id":59866,"date":"2025-06-11T06:51:03","date_gmt":"2025-06-11T04:51:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/?p=59866"},"modified":"2026-06-11T00:22:28","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T22:22:28","slug":"an-effect-of-appeasement-putin-targets-lithuania-latvia-and-estonia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/2025\/06\/11\/an-effect-of-appeasement-putin-targets-lithuania-latvia-and-estonia\/","title":{"rendered":"An effect of appeasement: Putin targets Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The current US administration claims to want peace in Ukraine, but the steps it is taking are going in a very different direction.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p><rel><a href=\"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/2025\/06\/06\/trumps-equidistance-between-russia-an-aggressor-and-ukraine-an-aggressed-country\/\">Trump's equidistance between Russia, an aggressor, and Ukraine, an aggressed country<\/a><\/rel><br \/>\n<rel><a href=\"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/2022\/08\/15\/russias-ultimatums-to-nato-and-to-the-us-putin-wanted-a-europe-subservient-to-moscow\/\">Russia's ultimatums to NATO and to the US: Putin wanted a Europe subservient to Moscow<\/a><\/rel><\/p>\n<p><big>Trump's complacent attitude emboldens Putin<\/big><\/p>\n<p>Until now, <strong>Donald Trump's strategy has consisted of pressuring the invaded country and not the invading country<\/strong>, openly placing the blame for a war started by Russia on Ukraine, as the US president himself has stated in several statements. <strong>This seems to be the supposed magic recipe that Trump hid during the presidential election campaign<\/strong>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vozdeamerica.com\/a\/trump-dice-resolveria-guerra-rusia-ucrania-en-un-dia-embajador-ruso-en-onu-dice-no-puede\/7681906.html\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">when he stated that he would resolve this war in \"24 hours\"<\/a> but without explaining how he would do it.<\/p>\n<p>Obviously, <strong>pleasing Putin has not served to end this war<\/strong>, an outcome that was foreseeable for anyone with a minimum of reasoning capacity, but not for the current US president. <strong>Trump's complacent attitude towards Russia has only served to embolden Putin<\/strong>, giving him hope of achieving the goals he had set for himself with this invasion, when those goals seemed unattainable due to Russia's evident military failure in Ukraine, with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/2024\/02\/24\/ukraine-vs-afghanistan-the-military-losses-of-the-ussr-in-ten-years-and-those-of-russia-in-two\/\">colossal losses for Russia<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><big>Russia wants NATO to withdraw from the Baltic states<\/big><\/p>\n<p>The Russian dictator no longer dreams of Trump managing to pressure Ukraine to the point of allowing a Russian victory against that country. <strong>As always happens when you try to appease a tyrant, he feels empowered and wants more.<\/strong> It happened in 1938 when the United Kingdom and France gave in to Hitler's wishes by handing over Czechoslovakia to him, and it's happening again now. <strong>The Kremlin has made this clear through one of its senior officials.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>On Monday, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/russia-end-ukraine-war-nato-baltics-2082912\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Newsweek reported that <em>\"Russia won't end Ukraine War until NATO 'pulls out' of Baltics\"<\/em><\/a>. The US media outlet refers to statements by <strong>Sergei Ryabkov, Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister<\/strong>, to the official Russian news agency Tass, in <a href=\"https:\/\/tass.ru\/interviews\/24168863\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">a public interview with this title<\/a>: <em>\"Deputy Foreign Minister Ryabkov: <strong>It is impossible to resolve the conflict until NATO withdraws<\/strong>\"<\/em>. Newsweek notes that Ryabkov is referring to NATO's presence in the Baltic states: <strong>Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><big>Putin's party already proposed taking over those three countries in 2015<\/big><\/p>\n<p>These three Baltic states joined NATO on March 29, 2004. <strong>Putin is determined to rebuild the old Soviet empire, which included these three countries<\/strong>. Let us recall that in December 2021, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/2022\/08\/15\/russias-ultimatums-to-nato-and-to-the-us-putin-wanted-a-europe-subservient-to-moscow\/\">the Kremlin sent an ultimatum to the US and NATO<\/a> through separate documents in which it laid out the terms of <strong>a blackmail to the West<\/strong>. Giving in to this blackmail would have created a geopolitical situation in which <strong>Europe would be subordinated to Moscow and defenseless against any Russian invasion<\/strong>, especially the eastern flank of the Alliance.<\/p>\n<p>In case there were any doubts about his intentions, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/2022\/06\/09\/ukraine-is-not-enough-for-putin-now-he-wants-to-take-over-lithuania-by-invoking-the-ussr\/\">on June 8, 2022, Putin's party proposed to stop recognizing Lithuania's independence<\/a>, repealing the resolution of the USSR State Council that allowed the Lithuanian people to regain their freedom. It wasn't Russia's first such move: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/putin-explores-legal-loopholes-take-back-baltic-nations-354379\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Putin's party had already explored legal loopholes to seize the three Baltic states in 2015<\/a>. Let's remember that <strong>Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia were invaded by the Soviet army in 1940<\/strong> as a result of the pact signed by Nazi Germany and the USSR to divide up several Eastern European countries.<\/p>\n<p><big>The Russian dictator places his hopes in fear and cowardice<\/big><\/p>\n<p>Of course, <strong>Putin's intention is to force NATO to withdraw from the Baltic states to leave them defenseless against a new Russian invasion<\/strong>. The Russian dictator is taking advantage of Trump's affinity for him to force a situation in which <strong>NATO would have to consider going to war with Russia over those three countries<\/strong>. Putin surely hopes that NATO would avoid invoking Article 5 of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nato.int\/cps\/en\/natohq\/official_texts_17120.htm?selectedLocale=en\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Washington Treaty<\/a>, in which NATO member states affirm that an armed attack against one member country of the Alliance will be considered an attack directed against all of them.<\/p>\n<p>Once again, as he did with Ukraine, <strong>the Russian dictator is placing his trust in the fear and cowardice that Russian propagandists promote in the West<\/strong> in order to ensure that NATO does not respond to any hostile action by Russia against one of its members. <strong>The question now is: will the Alliance allow itself to be twisted by this thug?<\/strong> I sincerely hope not. If it did, we would risk turning Europe into the fiefdom of a tyrant and war criminal who dreams of having the democratic countries of the West kiss his feet.<\/p>\n<p>---<\/p>\n<p><small>Photo: Wikimedia. Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump at the 2017 G-20 meeting in Hamburg, Germany.<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The current US administration claims to want peace in Ukraine, but the steps it is taking are going in a very different direction.<\/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":[9189,7325,10707,24636,11368,10731,16153,24635,15307,10431,7887],"class_list":["post-59866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-we-said-yesterday","category-world","tag-donald-trump","tag-estonia","tag-latvia","tag-lithunia","tag-nato","tag-russia","tag-russian-invasion-of-ukraine-of-2022","tag-sergei-ryabkov","tag-ukraine","tag-united-states","tag-vladimir-putin"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-12 02:49:05","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\/59866","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=59866"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59866\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.outono.net\/elentir\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}