U.P.I./Johnson's Russia List - 01.07.2002

 

From Johnson's Russia List

United Press International


Putin Uses Russians in Baltic States to Check NATO Expansion

By Derk Kinnane Roelofsma

WASHINGTON, Jan. 7 (UPI) -- European diplomats and NATO officials have furrowed brows these days as they mull over a disturbing Christmas gift delivered by President Vladimir Putin, a gift very different from the one he gave when he lined up with Washington in the war on terrorism.

On Dec. 24, Putin conducted a carefully staged phone-in.

The questions asked and who asked them were fully arranged in advance, and no spontaneous participation was allowed. Putin used the occasion to renew Moscow's threats to the three Baltic republics -- Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. His goal is to check their admission to NATO.

These countries were conquered by the Russians in 1940 and only freed of Moscow's yoke with the collapse of the Soviet Union a decade ago. The Russians continue to insist that these state wanted to join the Soviet Union, which is certainly not the case.

Moscow also exploits the presence of large numbers of Russians who chose to remain in these Westernized states rather than return to more backward Russia. But Moscow complains that they are a mistreated minority.

Putin announced he intended to take a much more vigorous stance on protecting the interests of Russian-speakers and called for a fight for official status for language. These remarks referred mostly to the Commonwealth of Independent States, set up when the Soviet Union imploded to maintain ties between Russia and Soviet republics that are now independent. But he also made a particular reference to the Baltic States, which are not CIS members.

Replying to a caller from Riga, Latvia, Putin drew a parallel between the Baltics and the Balkans.

A decision was made in Macedonia, he said, under pressure from the European Union and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe giving the Albanian population of Macedonia the right to representation in the state, including the security bodies, proportionate to their numbers in the overall Macedonian population. There was every reason, Putin said, to extend this principle to Russians in other countries, including those in the Baltics.

"They have the right to demand that this principle should apply to them too," Putin said.

The big difference between Latvia and its sister republics and Macedonia is that the Russians in the former have stayed on because they know they are better off than they would be in the motherland. In Macedonia, Albanians have been striving to improve their disadvantaged position.

Putin, however, can use the ethnic issue to effect in the run-up to the NATO summit in Prague, Czech Republic, next November. There are already Western European governments that say they are worried about bringing such an issue into the alliance and stirring up the Russians who they want to draw closer to NATO.

They take this position although the Baltics have shown a democratic respect for language and ethnic rights such that last month the OSCE ended its monitoring missions in Latvia and Estonia. Lithuania had earlier received OSCE approval.

Moscow reacted with anger to the OSCE action in keeping with its policy of seeking to promote divisions that can weaken their states.

Putin's "Christmas present" struck a sour note scarcely in harmony with the optimistic chorus of Western voices that see him as seeking to make Russia a part of the West.

It was the same note sounded some years ago by Moscow's diplomats, when Yeltsin was in the Kremlin. With arrogant confidence, they told their Baltic hosts that they, the Russians, would be back.