The Baltic States in Putin's Shadow | DW Documentary

Aug 16, 2024 | The Baltic states regained independence more than 30 years ago. Now, Russia has them looking over their shoulder, again. Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine has left many people wondering whether Russia will set its power-hungry sights on the Baltic states, once more.

"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.

Russia Warns Lithuania of ‘Serious’ Consequences over Rail Blockade

Jun 21, 2022 • Russia has demanded that Lithuania lift its ban on the transit of sanctioned goods by road and rail to the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad - threatening "serious and sensitive consequences" for the Lithuanian people if it doesn't.

Speaking in Kaliningrad, the head of Russia's security council described it as a "hostile action" and warned "retaliatory measures will follow".

Lithuania has insisted there's no blockade and it's simply implementing EU sanctions.


Verwandt.

Lithuania Strengthens Forces over Russia Tensions | DW News

Apr 20, 2022 • Lithuanians are anxiously following events in Ukraine. Many are preparing for a worst case scenario and some are training to take up arms against Russia.

Lithuania's Foreign Minister Discusses the Ongoing Russian Invasion of Ukraine

Apr 8, 2022 • Among several former Soviet Republics and satellite states that are now NATO members is the small Baltic nation of Lithuania. Fiercely independent, its security concerns are compounded not just by its former occupier, Russia, but by the adversaries that border it, including the Russian ally Belarus. Nick Schifrin sat down with Lithuania's Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis to discuss.

‘A 1938 Moment’: Lithuanian PM Warns about Russian Troops in Belarus

THE GUARDIAN: Ingrida Šimonytė says threats from Moscow and Beijing mean west cannot be mired by self-doubt and division

Ingrida Šimonytė: ‘I know Putin was probably feeling very happy because he feels an important guy.’ Photograph: Toms Kalniņš/EPA
The security landscape of the Baltic states and eastern Europe may be changed permanently if Russian troops amassed on the Ukraine border start to integrate with Belarusian troops, Lithuania’s prime minister has said.

“This is a 1938 moment for our generation,” Ingrida Šimonytė said in an interview. “Neutrality helps the oppressor and never the victim.”

Šimonytė, who is due to meet Boris Johnson on Tuesday, is one of the European politicians most willing to make a case for democracy and expose the methods of autocracies.

Her stance has led her country of only 2.8 million people on to the frontline of ideological conflict not only with Russia but also China.

Belarus is threatening to block potash exports to her country, and China punished Lithuania for the opening of a Taiwanese representative office in Vilnius by cutting trade and pressing companies to pull out of Lithuania. The UK has joined Lithuania to take China to the WTO over its behaviour.

Šimonytė said the twin threats from the superpowers showed it was necessary for the west not to be mired by self-doubt, internal divisions and self-satisfaction. “The first response is not to be afraid but to speak up,” she said. “We never see the masses on the streets demanding more autocracy.” » | Patrick Wintour, Diplomatic editor | Tuesday, February 8, 2022

Ukraine : Macron dit avoir obtenu de Poutine «qu'il n'y ait pas d'escalade» : Le président français Emmanuel Macron a assuré mardi avoir «obtenu» lors de ses discussions avec Vladimir Poutine «qu'il n'y ait pas de dégradation ni d'escalade» dans la crise russo-occidentale liée à l'Ukraine. »

Lithuania's Dark Past | DW English

Under Stalin's dictatorship, more than 200,000 Lithuanians were deported to Siberia. Many never returned. Survivors are still waiting for compensation, but Russia doesn't want to remember its prison camps and mass deportations.

Lithuania Attacks Russian 'Liberators' ahead of Victory Day Celebrations

Lithuania's President Dalia Grybauskaite

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Dalia Grybauskaite, president of the tiny Baltic republic, launches scathing attack on Russia ahead of Victory Day parade

Lithuania’s president has launched a scathing attack on Russia on the eve of V-E Day, warning that "we cannot accept the blackmail of an aggressor who calls itself the victor of Europe but who has launched a new war against Ukraine."

Dalia Grybauskaite, president of the tiny Baltic republic that ended the Second World War under Soviet rule, has been one of Russia’s harshest critics since the advent of the Ukraine crisis.

"Those who call themselves the conquer[or]s and liberators of Europe have begun a new war in Europe against a sovereign state wishing only to decide its own future," she said in an interview for the Polish press. » | Matthew Day in Warsaw | Thursday, May 07, 2015

Shavli Ghetto: Hannah Rigler's Testimony
Hannah Rigler was born in Shavli (Siauliai), Lithuania, in 1928. Her father was murdered shortly after the German invasion, and she was put in the ghetto with her mother and elder sister. In summer 1944, when the ghetto was liquidated they were taken to Stutthof camp. From there they were taken on a death march westwards. Hannah managed to escape and collapsed totally exhausted in a barn. She was found by a group of British POWs, who despite the great risk nursed her back to health.

Related »

Excruciating Details Emerge on Jewish Ghettos

YNET NEWS: Editor of 'Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos' says research conducted in 'town after town, village after village' in Eastern Europe found that Nazis made 'concerted effort to find every last Jew in every last place'

Even after decades of in-depth Holocaust research, excruciating details are only now emerging about more than 1,100 German-run ghettos in Eastern Europe where the Nazis murdered hundreds of thousands of Jews.

And there were about 200 more ghettos than previously believed, said Martin Dean, editor of the recently published "Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933-1945, Volume II." It's part of a long-term effort to document every site of organized Nazi persecution, beyond the well-known Warsaw ghetto and extermination camps like Auschwitz.

It "gives us information about ghettos that would slip into historical oblivion and be forgotten forever if we didn't have this volume," Holocaust scholar Lawrence Langer said. "Who knew there were more than 1,000 ghettos?"

More Jews died during World War II in Poland and the western Soviet Union — today's Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania — than the estimated 1 million gassed in Auschwitz, Langer said.

"The people are dead, but at least we have the memory of the place where they lived and some knowledge of who killed them," said Langer, an 83-year-old professor of English emeritus at Boston's Simmons College.

The museum fields inquiries daily about survivors' families using the new information — some of it from non-Jews divulging locations of unmarked mass graves. » | Associated Press | Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Troubling Development! Swastika Raised in Baltic Country – Tribute to History or Nazi Revival?

Legislating Gay Hate in Lithuania
THE GUARDIAN: If the Baltic state perseveres with new homophobic laws, it has no place in the European Union

How would you feel if your government tried to render you invisible? If they denied you access to healthcare or healthcare information? Isolated you from people like yourself? Prevented you from having a relaxed, fulfilling romantic life? Stigmatised and bullied you? If your character was constantly slandered and libelled but when you tried to defend yourself, or just tried to live your life peaceably, you were criminalised?

In July, Lithuania issued a law forbidding the "promotion of homosexuality" in places where children would be exposed to it. Which sounded very much like the ludicrous and culturally corrosive legislation that Britain used to have in the now widely ridiculed Section 28. So far, so bad. But things could be about to get a whole lot worse for some of our gay neighbours in eastern Europe.

It's following a familiar pattern. First, you start by claiming that you are protecting the children – an easy and emotive popular argument to win, however bankrupt your goals are – and then you enlarge your agenda. This is what is happening.

A mere two months later and the net is widening. Changes to articles 310 in the penal code, and 214 in the administrative code are being debated in the Seimas (Lithuania's parliament). They will criminalise – with the threat of a fine, community work or imprisonment – anyone involved in the "promotion" of homosexuality in "any public space". This, in the words of Nicola Duckworth, Europe director at Amnesty International, is "a new low in Lithuania's slide to state-sponsored homophobia."

But what would this new law mean? That gay people in Lithuania will not be able to access health promotion material, publicly organise themselves, advertise their businesses, have a gay press, stand up for themselves in public when they are bullied, share or express their culture. It means that they will suffer more discrimination, more harassment. It also invites the question: what next (or indeed, who next?).

Like the now-abolished Section 28 in the UK, it is a bully's charter giving state approval for the harassment of a particular – and already vulnerable – set of people. But where Section 28 was largely toothless and totemic, 310 is harsh and wide-reaching. Could we next be seeing attempts to recriminalise gay sex? >>> Joseph Galliano | Monday, September 14, 2009

New Dark Age Alert! Loi controversée: La Lituanie interdit toute publicité de l'homosexualité
LE POINT: Le parlement de Lituanie a adopté mardi une loi sur la "protection des mineurs", interdisant en particulier de faire dans ce pays toute "publicité" pour les relations homosexuelles, bisexuelles et polygames.

77 députés ont voté pour cette loi, trois y ont été opposés et quatre se sont abstenus.

Selon ce texte, toute information publique faisant de la publicité pour les relations homosexuelles, bisexuelles et polygames est considérée comme ayant un effet négatif sur la santé psychique, le développement physique, intellectuel et moral des mineurs.

La nouvelle loi ne prévoit toutefois aucune sanction particulière pour ceux qui ne la respecteraient pas.

"C'est un mardi noir", a déclaré à l'AFP Vladimir Simonko, le président du Conseil de la Ligue des gays lituaniens.

"C'est une homophobie institutionnalisée qui se met en place", a-t-il regretté.

Selon lui, les homosexuels lituaniens s'adresseront au président de la République pour lui demander de ne pas promulguer la loi. >>> AFP | Tuesday, June 16, 2009

IPS: Lithuania Throttles Gay Rights

BRATISLAVA - Rights groups are calling on EU leaders to act after Lithuanian lawmakers approved controversial legislation that they say makes homosexuals "second class citizens" and breaches European conventions on human rights.

The legislation passed by Lithuania's parliament this week bans the discussion of homosexuality in schools and any reference to it in public information available to children.

Gay and human rights groups have condemned the law, claiming it institutionalises homophobia, is discriminatory, and violates the right to freedom of expression.

They say it will also make gay youths more vulnerable, as teachers and other school students will be unable to provide information to them about homosexuality, or could be afraid to help them if they are bullied or attacked by peers.

They also believe it breaches the European Convention on Human Rights, and have called on members of the European Parliament (MEPs) and EU leaders to put pressure on the Lithuanian government and president, who has yet to sign the law into effect, to amend it. >>> By Pavol Stracansky | Friday, June 19, 2009