Hunger for power — the Baltic states in Putin's shadow

"There’s only one enemy and that’s Russia," says Estonian national Ain Tähiste, summing up his views on the issue in a sentence: "Latvia, Finland, Sweden – and on the Baltic Sea Poland, Germany, Denmark," he continues, “they’re all friends, but not the Russian neighbor.” 

“It’s naïve to think Russia’s far away," he adds.

Ain Tähiste guides the reporter team through the military museum on Hiiumaa. The Estonian island in the west of the country was off-limits to tourists during Soviet rule, because its location on the Baltic Sea made it strategically important to Moscow. Since the start of the Russian war on Ukraine, Estonia has removed old Soviet monuments form public spaces and banished some of them to museums. "The Soviet Union occupied Estonia in 1940," Ain explains. “Are we still expected to pay our respects to the troops that occupied us? No, it was high time this happened!”

22-year-old Matthias Merelaine is from Tallinn and has no direct experience of the Soviet era. He’s nevertheless preoccupied by the question of whether Russia will try to return to the Baltics. “We’d be ready," he says, "to go to the front, weapon in hand, to fight the enemy and defend the homeland."

National guards are booming in Baltic nations – including Lithuania. Paulus Jurkus, son of a fisher from Kleipėda, says he wouldn’t run away, if attacked. The only port city in Lithuania, his home is not far from the border with the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad.

This new aversion to Russians is also omnipresent in Latvia. Lauris Aleksevejs is a top chef in Latvia’s traditional seaside resort of Jurmala. The Russians used to be big spenders at Lauris’ restaurant. And since Latvia closed its borders to Russians, his income has nosedived. But he refuses to do business with the enemy.