... the USSR, and the depiction of large Russian-speaking communities as a fifth column leading to tensions that exist to this day. After a while, problems have accumulated, and Russia's unchanging attitude pushed the three Baltic republics towards the Western institutions: NATO and the European Union. In the midst of these problems, Russia has yet to change its attitude towards the Baltic states. Moscow preferred to talk to the 'old Europe' over the heads of Russia's closest Western neighbors. Russia still expects that Brussels, Berlin and Paris would solve all the problems within ...
... military intervention using “little green men” should not be discounted either, but the probability of this happening is much lower, since the Baltic countries have long since joined NATO and have essentially delegated their security to those EU and western European countries that have significant military capacities.
RIAC and ELN Report “Towards a More Stable NATO — Russia Relationship”
The situation in the countries of Southeast Europe is somewhat different, where poverty is the main problem that opens a window of opportunity for Russian influence. Indeed, Bulgaria and Romania have the lowest per capita GDP among ...
... extremely damaging consequences for mutual trust. The same can be said about the adapted Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE Treaty). The loss of this important arms control instrument was a major miscalculation, critically affecting the future of our relations.
It is absurd to believe that following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the West was nurturing plans to ‘enslave’ Russia, or that NATO expansion was a treacherous plan to further ‘strangle’ our country. Today’s Western conspiracy theories regarding Russia ...
... the ELN found fundamentally different interpretations, on both sides, to critical questions relating to the evolution of the European security order; the expansion of NATO; past military interventions; the right to self-determination; and the right to succession.
The nature of the problem:
The dominant western media narrative on the crisis in Russia-West relations is that, through its annexation of Crimea and intervention in eastern Ukraine, Russia has behaved aggressively,...
