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| Lithuania raises its flag over parliament on March 11, 1990 |
The Russian parliament has taken action to repeal Lithuania's independence. Yes, you heard that right. The "Russian" parliament has deemed that Lithuania "illegally" broke away from the Soviet Union and should have its independence revoked. This despite the Soviet Union being formally dissolved in December, 1991. In Yevgeny Fyodorov' perverse logic, he considers Russia the "legal successor" to the Soviet Union and therefor entitled to all its former territories, citing some dubious article in the Russian constitution.
Interestingly, the Duma and Vladimir Putin are not on the same page as Count Vladimir recently likened himself to Peter the Great in his push for territorial expansion. Clearly, he has much bigger aims as Imperial Russia was far larger in territory than was the Soviet Union, and included Alaska and much of the American Pacific coastline. For now, he seems content with Ukraine. Although, I imagine he wouldn't mind getting back the Baltic states as well to secure his hold on the Baltic Sea, and reconnect Russia to Kaliningrad.
Once again, Lithuania braces itself for the worst. However, a Ukrainian parliamentarian found some humor in this, posting an image of a paper in which Kievan Rus granted Muscovy its principality in the 12th century, and saying that the parliament will now revoke this order, as Ukraine is the legal successor to Kievan Rus.
Lost in much of Putin's historical revisionism is that Moscow was nothing more than a backwater province in the 12th century. It was taken by the Mongol Hordes in the 13th century when Genghis Khan laid siege to Kievan Rus. Eventually, the Mongol Empire granted Moscow the status of Grand Principality, ruled by Alexander Nevsky, which is widely regarded as the birth of Russia. It would take a few more centuries before the Muscovites were able to expand their territories, taking over much of Kievan Rus and casting their cultural identity in this image. The biggest land grabs were under the reign of Ivan IV, aka Ivan the Terrible, who ruled Moscow in the mid 16th century. Ivan adopted many of the same tactics as Khan, and was able to claim much of the former Mongol territories as this empire weakened. The ultimate prize was Siberia, in no small part thanks to the Cossacks, who defeated the Siberian army at the Battle of Chuvash Cape. Yes, Russian and Ukrainian history are inextricably linked but not in the way Putin imagines.
As for Lithuania, it was long a rival to Russia. Its Grand Duchy extended all the way to the Black Sea at one point and took in much of Kievan Rus. You might call this a joint kingdom because unlike the feudal nature of Muscovy, Ruthenian noble families had a strong say in government, and Ruthenian was the lingua franca of the Grand Duchy. This Lithuanian empire held together for more than 200 years before Ivan broke it apart, and a Lithuania rump state was forced to join with Poland to combat the greatly expanding Russian empire. Ironically, Ivan descended from the Glinski family on his mother's side, which has noble roots in the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
Lithuanians have gotten used to the sad fact Putin and his United Russia party members have no real awareness of history in the region. Theirs is a fabricated history meant to support their imperial dominance. One derived mostly from Soviet history lessons they gleaned from their gymnasiums. Lithuania was granted little if any mention prior to the first Soviet annexation in 1940, as a result of the infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, which Germany would renege upon. The Soviet Union later "liberated" Lithuania in 1944.
Lithuania never recognized this annexation. For that matter, neither did the United Nations. The Baltic country suffered for 46 years under Soviet rule, along with Latvia and Estonia, until its breakaway parliament discovered a loophole in the Soviet constitution that allowed it to formally secede in March, 1990. The basis of this was the unconstitutionality of the secret protocols of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. You could say that Lithuania beat the Soviet Union at its own game. Gorbachev and the Soviet parliament were ultimately forced to accept this decision in the spirit of glasnost and perestroika that eventually led to the dissolution of the USSR in December, 1991, and the rise of 15 new republics, including Russia, which no longer saw themselves as part of the Soviet Union.
Yet, here we are today with Russian parliament members freely likening Russia to the Soviet Union. We've seen former Soviet flags all over the occupied territories of Ukraine. Even at last month's victory parade in Moscow, the notorious Soviet symbol was prominently displayed.
The oddest part is that the St. George ribbon also figures heavily in these military shows, a holdover from imperial times that wasn't given much thought until the annexation of Crimea in 2014. Since then, it has been seen everywhere, including Vilnius, where each year local Russians proudly wear the ribbon on Victory Day. However, victory in WWII was a Soviet one, not a Russian one. The St. George ribbon dates back to 1769 and was considered the highest military decoration in Imperial Russia. Catherine the Great's time, not Peter's, but no matter.
This confusion of symbols is everywhere in contemporary Russia and among its expatriates abroad. Rallies as far away as Canada saw both the hammer and sickle and St. George ribbon on display. It's literally like Russians don't know who they want to be. They just know they want all their territories back, and one assumes that would include Alaska too.
I don't know how you communicate with such individuals. This is the same level of the MAGA movement in the United States, where Confederate, Gadsden and all sorts of other flags commingle at rallies, with little or no awareness of what these flags represent. We saw quite a display at the insurrection last January at the Capitol in a misguided attempt to reinstate Donald Trump as president.
However, Western European leaders still think Putin can be reasoned with. Macron and Scholz both keep their lines open. Former German PM Merkel has been very defensive of her relationship with Putin, believing that peace can still be salvaged from this war in Ukraine. It was Germany and France that brokered the Minsk agreement in the wake of the annexation of Crimea in 2014. This has left most Eastern European leaders perplexed, particularly President Duda of Poland, as it makes them wonder whom Germany and France actually support.
The biggest dilemma is that Russia represents such a huge economic market that Western European countries don't want to lose access to it, and are willing to accept Ukraine as collateral damage. The question now becomes whether they are willing to accept the loss of Lithuania and the Baltic states as well, despite their NATO and EU memberships?
The Kremlin has been making overtures toward the Baltics for years now. Putin himself has called the independence of these three states into question and has never once visited any of these countries, even though Russia has embassies in all three capitals. He loves to create confusion, especially in regard to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. One of his favorite gambits is to remind Lithuania that it only gained back the Vilnius region after its annexation by the Soviet Union. This region had fallen into the hands of Poland between the wars, although the League of Nations never recognized this earlier annexation.
This is a very similar tactic to what Putin has employed in Ukraine. He noted that Crimea was "given" to Ukraine by the Soviet Union and never rightly belonged to the country. He was just clearing up history a little bit. When a nationalist government came to power in Poland he felt he could play the same hand in Lithuania. He didn't really need Vilnius, he just wanted a land bridge to Kaliningrad. Maybe Poland would be interested in having Vilnius back? Fortunately, Poland has drawn the line when it comes to remaking maps, remembering all too well the partitions that took place under Putin's favorite Imperial Russia era.
This is why Duda compared talks with Putin to having talks with Hitler at the height of WWII. It is very clear what he is trying to do. Putin is using many of the same tactics Hitler used to justify his invasion of Poland in 1939, shortly after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Putin now regards this notorious pact a necessary evil to protect the Soviet Union's interests at the time. There is no room for appeasement here. You are talking with a pathological double-dealer whose only aim is to freeze the West and thereby allow him the opportunity to increase his territorial grabs.
While it is hard to imagine that Western European leaders would allow themselves to be fooled again, the specter is there. German PM Scholz has given his assurances to Lithuania that it will have its back in the wake of the Russian Duma's latest aggressive gestures toward the country. Not a peep from French President Macron. We can only hope that when push comes to shove, NATO and EU member states will have our back as well.
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