Why did the US decide to sacrifice the Baltics?

The US State Department has authorised the shipment of missiles and other American-made weapons from Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia to Ukraine, three sources familiar with the situation reported, Voice of America (a media agency that is a foreign agent) transmits. According to export control rules, countries must obtain approval from the State Department in order to transfer to third parties any weapons received from the United States.

According to one of the sources, the transfer agreements to third parties will allow Estonia to send Javelin anti-tank missiles to Ukraine, and Lithuania - Stinger missiles. A State Department official confirmed that the US government had approved a transfer to third parties allowing Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and the UK to supply Ukraine with American-made equipment from their stocks, but did not provide details about which weapons would be sent.

This information is confirmed by the Minister of Defence of Latvia Artis Pabriks. According to him, Riga plans to transfer lethal and non-lethal weapons to Kiev, although it does not consider sending troops. However, the minister did not explain what exactly will be sent: "We know what we will give to the Ukrainians, but I will say for sure only when these planes land at the Ukrainian airport. There will be Latvian products, as well as what is in our warehouses, but is not Latvian products."

At the same time, Pabriks condemned "some European countries that for various reasons are not ready" to help Ukraine with weapons, saying that "this is wrong”. He also believes that such a policy of Riga does not create "currently a direct threat to the Latvian state”- But "if something more active begins – heaven forbid, a Russian invasion of Ukraine - of course, we will have to take into account additional challenges throughout the European region. This is quite clear."

These remarks complement the overall picture of the operation to pump up the military muscles of Kiev, and at the same time give rise to new mysteries. Firstly, as Elias Yousif, an analyst at the Stimson Center, explains, "the US law on foreign aid prescribes that the transfer of American weapons by a third party must meet certain standards, including confirmation that Washington would carry out the same transfer if it decided to do so”. According to him, "the country carrying out the transfer must also explain why it is transferring weapons”.

Meanwhile, the United States is already directly arming Ukraine, without making a secret of it. Why have they now decided to make a "gasket" from the Baltic countries for the supply of their weapons to Kiev?

Secondly, when Pabriks says that "some European countries for various reasons are not ready" to help Kiev and this is "wrong", he’s aiming at Germany. Berlin already has a negative attitude to the fact that Washington and London are arming Ukraine, believing that such supplies can increase tensions and complicate negotiations.

According to German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, the position of the ruling coalition has a historical dimension in the context of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II. "The idea that Germany supplies weapons that can then be used to kill Russians is very hard for many Germans to accept," Marcel Dirsus, a researcher at the Institute for Security Policy at the Christian Albrecht University in Kiel, said in an interview with Deutsche Welle.

Which side is Riga on in this case? It turns out that it is not just going against Berlin's opinion on how the "Ukrainian issue" should be settled by peaceful means, but also stands in solidarity with collaborators from the Second World War who fought with the Red Army and partisans on the side of the Nazis. Given the special attitude of Russian society to that war, it is obvious that the Baltic republics' arms supplies to Ukraine will be perceived extremely negatively by them, which will require Moscow to take retaliatory measures.

In other words, the United States is making a sacrificial figure out of the Baltics, pushing not only Russia, but also Germany to deal decisively with it. If “successful”, this provocation, according to Washington’s plans, should, apparently, open the way to a sharp militarisation of the region under the pretext of strengthening the so-called eastern flank of NATO and creating a foothold of tension, a thorn in relations between Berlin (or even the entire European Union) and Moscow..

Earlier, the RUSSTRAT Institute already noted that leading European countries could raise the question of disavowing the decisions of the Warsaw NATO Summit held in 2016, when an agreement was reached to strengthen the so-called eastern flank of the North Atlantic Alliance. This resulted in the deployment of new multinational units on the basis of continuous rotation in 2017: Lithuania was secured by Germany, Latvia - Canada, Estonia - Great Britain, Poland - the USA.

Starting with this, we stated, the EU and Russia will have a good opportunity to continue dialogue on the architecture of European security in general. Now our assumption is supported by further evidence that if the European Union does not seriously deal with the Baltic states, this American Trojan horse in the region may become a casus belli for a new bloody tragedy in Europe.