32 years ago today

Today is a solemn day in Lithuania.  It is the morning after tens of thousands of citizens stood down the Soviet tanks in front of the barricaded parliament building and demanded their independence be recognized.  Gorbačev thought he could use the cover of the Persian Gulf War to go into Vilnius and subdue the country but the press quickly picked up on events and televised them around the world.  Jonas Mekas recorded all the news stories coming out of the country and presented it as a 5-hour documentary.  Most of it filmed directly off his television set in New York.  It was an evening that rocked the world.  A tiny country no larger than a postage stamp in comparison to Europe had stood its ground against the mighty Soviet Union.  

32 years later the memories are as vivid as ever as my wife recounts that night.  She was just 25.  She and her younger brother took part in events, much to their father's chagrin.  After all, she had a small child, 2 years old.  You should be thinking about her, her father said, but Daina wanted to be part of this epic moment in history.  

Lithuanians weren't exactly defenseless.  Her brother along with others were busy making Molotov cocktails to throw at the tanks.  It was pretty much a futile gesture but nonetheless showed their resistance.  The soldiers had been told not to confront the citizens, as Gorbačev had recently won a Nobel Peace Prize and it wouldn't look good if the protests turned into a full scale riot.  Nevertheless, 14 Lithuanians died that evening due to confrontations.  There was a lot of gun fire, rubber bullets presumably, and the blasts of tanks shooting blank cartridges.  Daina lost her hearing in one ear.

The Soviets stormed the television station and tower to shut off live broadcasting.  They eventually gained control of Vilnius but the news was already widespread.  There were several tense days.  Many thought it would be just another Prague Spring but Gorbačev lost his nerve and pulled back.  The Soviet forces remained in Lithuania for 225 days.  The final retreat didn't occur until August 23, 1991, when Lithuanians were able to reclaim control.  It was on that day that the statue of Lenin was pulled down in Lukiškių square, which became the symbol of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

For Putin and other Russian hardliners it was a day that would live in infamy.  Young Vladimir was a KGB agent stationed in Dresden when the wall came down in 1989 and as the story goes had to scramble to get out of East Germany.  The Soviet Union was in tatters but many felt it would hold on.  Lithuania showed that the communist country was far weaker than any one had imagined, turning its own constitution against it by pointing out that the Soviet republics had the right the secede, much to the chagrin of the Gorbačev, who just wanted to make the USSR a "kinder, friendlier nation."  Putin called the collapse of the Soviet Union "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century," blithely ignoring two world wars.

Ever since, Putin has been making the case for the reformation of the Soviet Union.  He has mounted incursions into multiple former Soviet republics including Georgia and Ukraine, cleaving off parts of these countries in the name of Russia, which has become an odd amalgam of Russian and Soviet nationalism under his 23-year reign.  One day he is extolling the virtues of Peter the Great.  The next day it is Stalin.

This is why Lithuania has remained vigilant.  They know freedom isn't free.  They don't need catchy slogans to remind them of that.  They lived through Soviet repression and Russian repression before that.  They know most Russians don't recognize its independence, anymore than they do that of Ukraine.  Most Russians still see these former Soviet republics as part of Mother Russia.  

The Russian presence in these countries varies significantly.  In Lithuania, Russians have their own state-supported schools and information services and can live essentially apart from the mainstream of the country.  They get support from the Kremlin, and worries grow as to how much of this Russian minority represents a "fifth column," given the rhetoric that comes out of Moscow.  This is why Lithuania and the other Baltic republics demand security guarantees from NATO, which have been slow in coming.

After the war broke out in Ukraine, Germany promised Lithuania a brigade of 5000 soldiers along with all the necessary hardware.  Germany already had a battalion of 1000 soldiers in the country, roughly matching the US presence.  However at a recent meeting, Germany said it couldn't supply that many soldiers and would have a brigade on alert in case tensions grew between Lithuania and Russia.  The German defense minister grew quite testy when confronted by the Lithuanian press.

As it turns out Germany doesn't even have a full brigade ready for deployment anywhere.  It organizes its armed forces in smaller battalions and would need time to put a brigade together.  Lithuania would also have to provide facilities for such a contingent far in excess of what it currently has.  These forces would be rather minimal in the face of a Russian invasion, as it has mobilized as many as 70,000 men in its joint maneuvers with Belarus along the Lithuanian border in recent years.  

It is fortunate in some ways that Russia is so heavily preoccupied with Ukraine, as it doesn't seem like NATO would be ready if Putin decided to take his war to one of its member nations.  Lithuania is not defenseless.  It has an army of 23,000 active soldiers and another 100,000 reservists, and would no doubt get support from Poland.  Given what has happened in Ukraine, it is conceivable that Lithuania could withstand an initial Russian onslaught.  However, it depends heavily on NATO support.

Lithuania remembers well George W. Bush's speech in City Hall Square in 2002 when he vowed "No more Yaltas."  It was Bush who cleared the path for Lithuania's entry into NATO, which it joined along with 6 other Eastern European countries in 2004.  Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary had joined NATO in 1999.  

Putin loves to point to this expansion as the "casus belli" for his aggressive behavior.  He still sees these European countries as the "Pale of Russia," an expression used in Imperial times. The Warsaw Pact in Soviet days.  He doesn't accept the fact that these countries had long been part of Europe before Russia and the Soviet Union exerted their influence over them.  Bush's push to include these countries in NATO simply recognized the earlier boundaries, although one could argue that Bush wasn't that historically astute.  

Bush used these Eastern European countries as part of a rendition program to interrogate and torture suspected terrorists.  There were "black sites" in Lithuania and Romania that have long since been recognized.  It was the cynical price these countries paid to be part of NATO.  They had signed bilateral agreements with the US in exchange for security guarantees.

Nothing is ever clean, and certainly one can make the case that Russia had reason to feel "threatened," but then the US had signed any number of agreements with Russia for use of its air space and staging areas in its ongoing war with Afghanistan between 2002 and 2021.  The US even had joint military exercises with Russia during the Bush and Obama administrations, much to the chagrin of Eastern European NATO countries.

No, Russia simply used the NATO presence in Eastern Europe as an excuse for its incursions into neighboring states.  Putin was greatly worried that Georgia and Ukraine might become part of NATO at some point and wanted to make it clear these countries were off limits.  

Russia got away with its incursion into Georgia in 2008 and figured why not try again.  What's the worst that can happen?  More sanctions?  Seems Russia hadn't counted on the support Ukraine would get from NATO member states, particularly Poland, which Putin regarded as an ally.  There has been a story circulating for years that Russia planned to partition Ukraine, keeping everything east of the Dnipro to itself, including Kjiv, and splitting the western half between Poland and Hungary.  Of course, Russia hotly denies this, as does Hungary.  Poland was appalled, to hear former Foreign Minister Sikorski recount the story, warning the West of Putin's intentions.  No one paid much heed.  Western nations viewed Russia as troublesome but would never go that far. Then Putin invaded Ukraine in 2014, cleaving off Crimea and fomenting a civil war in the Donbas region.

Russia, of course, felt its actions were justified as it believed the US to be behind the uprising in Euromaidan square in the winter of 2013-14.  Putin thought he had solved the problem in Ukraine when Yanukovych won the presidential election in 2010, but the parliament was still decidedly pro-Western and wanted EU integration.  When Yanukovych rejected a trade agreement with the EU in November 2013, at Putin's behest, all hell broke loose.  This had little to do with the US, but Putin was still fuming over Obama calling Russia a "regional power."  Putin wanted to show the world that Russia was an international power not to be toyed with.

Since then the US and NATO have invested heavily in Ukraine in its ongoing civil war in the Donbas.  Putin hadn't gauged just how much Ukrainian armed forces had improved in the 8 intervening years.  If he had studied the maps from the Minsk agreements, he would have seen that Ukraine had taken back a pretty large swathe of disputed territory.  Or maybe he did and felt it was necessary to intercede otherwise Russia would lose its foothold in Ukraine.

This was a proxy war until Russia chose to mount a "special military operation" on February 24, 2022.  No one expected Ukraine to hold its ground.  Russia had mobilized 200,000 men. The US and NATO planned on providing support to a long insurrection effort much like what happened to the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s.  But, the vaunted Russian military turned out to be a paper tiger and Ukraine was able to repel the assault on Kjiv and push Russia out of much of the northern part of the country by summer. 

Eastern European countries want NATO to finish off Russia's beleaguered army but Western countries appear content to play defense, giving Ukraine just enough munitions to keep Russian forces at bay but not enough to allow them to take the offensive in this war.  That was until this week.  

Poland and Lithuania made the surprise announcement that they would give Ukraine a company of German Leopard tanks, contingent on other NATO countries providing more armored vehicles.  Germany was taken completely unaware and is not at all pleased with this decision.  For months Germany had been promising Ukraine armored vehicles but considered its Leopard tanks too sophisticated for Ukrainian forces.  It seems that Poland and Lithuania chose to press Germany into action.

It is no coincidence that this fell on the eve of Lithuania commemorating its defiant stand against the Soviet Union in 1991.  Ukrainian President Zelensky recognized it as such by saying your battle is our battle.  He also acknowledged Poland's Solidarity movement that led to the collapse of the Warsaw Pact in 1989.  Lithuanian and Polish presidents were present to sign an agreement in Kjiv that would turn over the tanks to Ukraine.

Today, the UK announced it will be sending Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine along with additional artillery systems in advance of what Western military analysts believe to be a major assault by Russia in the coming weeks.

For the past year, Lithuania has combined its independence celebrations with support for Ukraine, as it did for Belarus when millions of its citizens protested against the government following the disputed 2020 elections.  January 13 is no different, as Lithuania's defiance in 1991 led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union and formation of 15 new countries that significantly changed the political map.  It's unfortunate that Russia didn't learn the lesson from this collapse.  It seems history will repeat itself.