Habib Massoud was the Canadian chargé d’affaires to Lithuania and head of the Canadian diplomatic office in Vilnius from 2007 to 2010.
The Baltic countries – Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia – have long kept a wary watch over Russia, their historically hostile next-door neighbour. Indeed, even after they gained independence in 1991 following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the three countries have been warning the West that we should not trust the Russians. During my time in Lithuania representing Canada, I was told innumerable times by many people that I should not be naive. Russia, they kept repeating to me, cannot be relied upon to not act violently toward its neighbours – particularly those that used to be part of the USSR.
But those warnings largely fell on deaf ears. “The Western Europeans pooh-poohed and patronized us for these last 30 years,” Radoslaw Sikorski – a former foreign minister of Poland, which shares the Baltic region’s attitudes toward Russia – told Politico. “For years [they] were patronizing us about our attitude: ‘Oh, you know, you over-nervous, over-sensitive Central Europeans are prejudiced against Russia.’”
So it is little wonder that the Baltic countries reacted so quickly and vehemently on Feb. 24, when Russia launched its full invasion of Ukraine in the name of what Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki described as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “determination to carry out the scenario of rebuilding the Russian empire.” The long-simmering troop accumulation on Ukraine’s borders, and the war itself, posed a direct existential threat to the region.
What might be more surprising is that the Baltic countries haven’t thumbed their noses at the West since the invasion. “This is a situation where you would want to say, ‘I’ve told you so,’” said Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte. “But there is very little amount of sort of happiness of being right.”
Westerners, the Balts have long argued, have fallen into a trap on Russia. We’ve come to believe that if only we had been nice to Russia, and if only we had tried to integrate its economy into ours, then the Russian regime would surely have become softer and nicer. Now, we have become too soft and too forgiving of Russia, fooled by precisely the superficial and cynical shows of liberalism and reform that the Balts had warned us about. In their view, Russia was, is and always will be a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Their lack of trust stems from historical suffering. An afternoon visit to the Occupation Museum in central Vilnius would expose a person to the Soviets’ brutality over the course of five decades of occupation; during that time, hundreds of thousands of people from the Baltics were deported, executed or sent to labour camps. Even after their independence, Moscow has taken aim at the Baltic countries’ active roles in NATO and the European Union, calling them a threat to Russia’s security, sovereignty and autonomy. It helps explain the Baltic peoples’ often deep and personal animosity toward Russia.
When Russia invaded Ukraine, the West assumed in the opening days that Russian forces would quickly overrun the country. But the Balts had more faith in the government and people of Ukraine. The Baltics and Poland have been at the vanguard of efforts to rally Western allies, particularly NATO members, to urgently provide as much military and economic support as possible to Ukraine. While the United States has provided by far the most support in absolute terms, Estonia, Latvia, Poland and Lithuania – in that order – have contributed the most in terms of share of GDP, in that order. By contrast, Canada has donated the equivalent of 0.19 per cent of our GDP in military and economic support, and the U.S., just 0.22 per cent.
Amid reports of Ukraine’s recent impressive territorial gains against a seemingly befuddled Russian military, there is hope that the West will realize this is an opportunity to defend the world from the existential threat Russia poses. The Baltic countries hope, too, that the West understands the conflict is more than a local war – that it is the broader menace they’ve been warning the world about.