The anxiety is understandable. Historical experience, plus proximity to a belligerent Russian regime under Vladimir Putin, put the Baltics far ahead of the curve on Ukraine. Instead of waiting for Russia’s full-scale invasion to act, the Baltic trio took sharp note of looming dangers way back in 2014 when Mr Putin made his first grabs at Ukraine’s Crimea and Donbas regions. Lithuania and, later, Latvia reintroduced conscription. Lithuania doubled and then tripled defence spending. All three unhitched themselves from Russian energy supplies. They successfully lobbied for bigger allies to pre-position small numbers of troops and supplies on their territory.
Yet their calls for stronger military deterrents, as well as for measures to protect European economies, were largely ignored in Berlin, Brussels and Paris. When Russian tanks rolled towards Kyiv in February 2022 there was little surprise in the Baltics, but rather a glum pride in being right. “We went from neurotics to experts overnight,” sighs Mihkel Tikk, who directs Estonia’s cyber-defence. Now that the rest of NATO has woken up to the danger, however, satisfaction in the Baltics is tempered by fear that bigger powers will waste the opportunity to put Russia back in its bottle not just temporarily, but for good.
In the short term there is little doubt what people in the Baltic states most want: all three of their parliaments recently voted overwhelmingly for NATO to include Ukraine as a member. But those votes were symbolic. Although the alliance offered Ukraine a path to membership at a summit in Bucharest way back in 2008, even gung-ho Baltic officials admit it is hard to see how a country at war and under partial occupation can join NATO without instantly drawing its allies into direct combat with a nuclear-armed Russia. The best they expect from a summit declaration on this score is a more explicit commitment to Ukraine’s security, and a more specific promise of eventual membership. It would be nice to have dates and waypoints, says Lithuania’s Mr Landsbergis.
Further disappointment may be in store if Turkey continues to block NATO membership for Sweden, and if other countries fail to agree that a commitment to spend 2% of their GDP on defence should become a baseline figure and not just a widely ignored target. Estonia is already spending close to 3%, but despite excellent training and high morale its forces remain tiny. A recent promise by Germany’s defence minister, Boris Pistorius, to turn a small, rotating German force stationed in Lithuania into a permanent 4,000-strong brigade, has been widely welcomed.
