Lithuania’s friends and brothers

Soviet propaganda poster during the winter
war with Finland, 1939-1940.
From Wikipedia.org.

“Do you know how we Fins look upon the Russians as brothers or friends?” A Finnish friend of mine asked, and soon he revealed the answer: “We consider them our brothers, of course, because friends you can choose yourself.”

Lithuania of today is facing the problem Finland has had to deal with for many decades, and is now learning the art of keeping close ties to the West without irritating Russia too much. But Lithuania has got many more “friendship dimensions” to tackle; to keep up the mood towards the EU and to balance its relations between America and Western Europe.

Many would even say that it is questionable who are the real friends of Lithuania within Lithuania itself, or as a columnist recently wrote on this issue: “All these scandals and infights among politicians are no more than battles of personal interests which have very little if anything to do with interests of the nation.”

But first back to Russia, where a recent poll gives quite interesting information on how ordinary Russians view the relations with other countries. According to the poll, Russia's best friends are Belarus (47 percent), Kazakhstan (33 percent), China (24 percent), Germany (22 percent) and India (15 percent).

Russia's main foes are Latvia (46 percent), Georgia (44 percent), Lithuania (42 percent), the United States (37 percent), Estonia (28 per cent) and Ukraine (27 percent).

Lithuania is, in other words, considered one of Russia‘s top foes.

As for Russo-US relations, Russia has the last 20 years been happy to have had relatively good ties with Uncle Sam. However, Putin's and Medvedev’s version of democracy is regarded by the United States as a slide towards totalitarianism.

Simultaneously, Russia is trying to improve its ‘security situations’. Around its eastern regions this is being done by establishing and strengthening a number of bilateral and multilateral partnerships, including strengthening Russo-Chinese strategic cooperative partnership, developing Russo-Indian ties and improving Russo-Japanese relations.

What Russia is doing to improve its ‘security situation’ with the Baltic States remains not always too clear, but a top Lithuanian politician told me recently that Russia now has more than 300 agents here, all trying to infiltrate and influence political changes as well as economy and other spheres, ready to ‘invest’ into areas where they see weaknesses in the Lithuanian economy, society and political life that could give Moscow some advantages by seeding discord.

We described recently how the big powers France, Germany, Poland, and Russia now seem to be moving into a better climate of cooperation among themselves. We suggested in this context that Lithuania and the other Baltic States once again could become victims of the great powers' actions, and we recommended a much closer cooperation with the Nordic countries (Scandinavia) as the best and safest solution for Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia in the future.

The Baltic countries should, in my opinion, cooperate closely on a common approach to Scandinavia, and they should do their utmost to become independent of gas, oil and electricity from Russia – as soon as possible.

Lithuania already pays 50% more for gas bought from Gazprom than what Germany pays for the same gas, and there is little doubt that Russia is doing everything possible to prevent the Baltic States from developing their own energy sources. Russia has already taken a number of worrisome, significant steps to maintain and enhance its energy monopoly here.

The Baltic States may soon be even more squeezed and caught in a trap if the Nordic countries and the EU do not do more to help in achieving a much higher degree of independence from Russian energy.

It’s good to have brothers. Friends are sometimes even better.

Aage Myhre, Editor-in-Chief