Putin Set to Undermine NATO in Baltics
By: John Grady
Vladimir Putin is engaged in “an existential struggle” with the West, not only in Ukraine and other close-by former Soviet states, but particularly to undermine NATO in the Baltic nations, a leading expert on Russia and Eurasia said Tuesday at the Heritage Foundation.
Speaking at the Washington think-tank, Eugene Rumer, director of the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said “there is plenty to worry about” in Baltic countries such as Estonia and Latvia, with their large ethnic Russian populations.
The Russian president “is not adverse to using them to make domestic trouble” in a variety of domains such as cyber and disinformation. This presents “a challenge of dealing with less than full-scale war threats” to NATO in the Baltic.
“How do we deal with these crises short of war?” That, he said, is the question confronting the alliance.
For all former Soviet republics, he said the more assertive Russia “is more prone than before to look less kindly on engagement with the West”
Rumer, the co-author Conflict in Ukraine, said Putin does “not fully control the situation on the ground” in eastern Ukraine, where Russian-backed separatists are trying to break away from the government in Kiev.
...............
Read more: news.usni.org
Vladimir Putin is engaged in “an existential struggle” with the West, not only in Ukraine and other close-by former Soviet states, but particularly to undermine NATO in the Baltic nations, a leading expert on Russia and Eurasia said Tuesday at the Heritage Foundation.
Speaking at the Washington think-tank, Eugene Rumer, director of the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said “there is plenty to worry about” in Baltic countries such as Estonia and Latvia, with their large ethnic Russian populations.
The Russian president “is not adverse to using them to make domestic trouble” in a variety of domains such as cyber and disinformation. This presents “a challenge of dealing with less than full-scale war threats” to NATO in the Baltic.
“How do we deal with these crises short of war?” That, he said, is the question confronting the alliance.
For all former Soviet republics, he said the more assertive Russia “is more prone than before to look less kindly on engagement with the West”
Rumer, the co-author Conflict in Ukraine, said Putin does “not fully control the situation on the ground” in eastern Ukraine, where Russian-backed separatists are trying to break away from the government in Kiev.
...............
Read more: news.usni.org
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario