A Ukrainian soldier named Serhiy, returning from Russian captivity, has reportedly been found mutilated with swastikas carved into his forehead, as disclosed by Dr. Olexandr Turkevich, who is treating him.
The soldier, blindfolded during the ordeal, claimed Russian soldiers threatened to dismember him, citing accusations of fascism.
We are not anti-Russia, we are simply pro-survival. Even before the Soviet occupation, tsarist Russia did a lot to destroy our national identities, in Lithuania, they forbade writing our language in Roman alphabet and hunted smugglers that carried books written in it. The ban and other repressions caused several massive rebellions including 1830s and 1860s ones.
The Tsar later sent his hound, Muravjov, who hanged so many men that the line of gallows went from Kaunas to Vilnius (~90 km). They have put a statue of Muravjov outside of Lithuanian consulate in Kaliningrad. I guess they are going to put a statue of Adolf Hitler outside the Israeli consulate next /s
And imperialism is common among big countries, sure, but it is Russians who enflame their local minorities in neighbouring countries and then rush to save them. And we do have a Russian minority.
My point is, due to all this complicated and violent history, Lithuania will obviously be on a higher alert than many other countries - that’s what I’m saying first and foremost. This means a lot of false alarms, which the rest of the world recognizes, and which is why those early warnings didn’t help.
But thanks for making your point, it is important to the understanding of the problem as well.
Genuine question - could you provide examples of open high-level hostilities Russia has shown to Baltic or other countries related to Russian minorities? Cause from the inside it looks mostly as showing concern over Russians having their culture stripped away in order to force assimilation. Don’t know much on how it’s going in Lithuania in particular, but I have ethnic Russian relatives in Latvia and many of the restrictions imposed, language and cultural, seem very unreasonable and hostile.
Russian hostilities are not open until they are.
Belarus sent a lot of immigrants from 3rd countries to Baltic states and Poland to cause problems for us.
Russian propaganda machine was to blame for enflaming a lot of marginal political movements, like antivax, anti-LGBT and now anti-Ukraine.
Russian backed propaganda machines were cutting up Baltic states and inventing non-existant separatist movements since 2010. But unlike in Ukraine, none of them stuck.
The problem with Russians in the Baltics is how many of them still think that they are either in charge or that Russian army will be back soon. They completely refuse to integrate, refuse to learn our language, our customs, our values, despite living here for over 50 years. In comparison , I spent 9 months in Sweden, I can give directions and haggle in the market in Swedish.
Toppling the Russian government is the key to end the horrific war and genocide. The “Republics” in Russia should have been independent.
I see your point.
I wonder, though, how many of this is genuine and how much is false politically motivated accusations, which are very often the case in the political landscape of many countries.
Being to blame and being the cause are two very different things.
Also, you know the world is fucked up when immigrants can be used as a weapon. We seriously need to deal with the problem, and not through stricter border control and enforcement. But I digress.
I get your integration argument, though.
We will never know how large the extent of Russian propaganda and other intelligence activities are, but whenever we have any problems in our country there are always chaos actors linked to Russia. They are always on the lookout for weakness to exploit. Even a local anti-fracking protest had ties to Gazprom.