EU state to give Ukraine fixed share of GDP annually
RT | April 11, 2024
Riga has resolved to supply Ukraine with military aid amounting to $120 million (€112 million) this year and will continue giving the equivalent of 0.25% of Latvia’s GDP in aid annually for the next three years, under a new agreement between the two nations.
The document was signed on Thursday by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky and Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics on the sidelines of a summit of 13 EU nations in Lithuania, and by Ukraine and Moldova.
Under the agreement on “long-term support and security obligations,” Riga will allocate the same portion of its GDP for military assistance to Kiev in 2024, 2025 and 2026. The aid could come in the form of equipment, weapons or military training, according to the text of the document published by Kiev.
The Baltic nation also pledged to back Ukraine’s NATO and EU aspirations. Zelensky praised the development as a “concrete result” of his trip to Vilnius, host of the 15-nation summit. He also thanked Latvia for its “readiness to help” for as long as necessary. Riga has not commented on the agreement so far.
Earlier, another Baltic State, Estonia, vowed to spend the same share of its GDP on annual aid to Kiev. In January, Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas told local media outlet ERR that her nation would spend 0.25% of its GDP on assistance for Ukraine for the next four years. She also called on other Western nations to follow suit.
However, Tallinn and Kiev have not yet signed any deals relating to the initiative. In early March, the Baltic nation said that the two states had begun developing a corresponding agreement. Later that same month, Ukrainian media reported that work on the treaty was “in its final stages.”
Estonia has been one of the most hawkish of Kiev’s backers amid its ongoing conflict with Russia. In March, Tallinn backed French President Emmanuel Macron after he raised the prospect of potentially sending NATO troops to Ukraine, with Kallas saying her country would not rule out deploying forces to Ukrainian territory.
Later in March, a poll showed that public trust in the Kallas-led government of Estonia stood at just 17%, down from 21% in February.
Latvia has taken a more moderate stance. In March, Prime Minister Evika Silina said that NATO was not ready for talks about sending troops to Ukraine and called for the focus to remain on military and financial assistance to Kiev instead.
European ‘Peace Fund’ Stoking War in Ukraine as Scheming EU Governments Take Advantage
By Dmitry Babich – Sputnik – 17.03.2024
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, French President Emmanuel Macron, and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk recently vowed to procure more weapons for Ukraine at a meeting in Berlin.
“A new era is dawning,” claimed Macron, while Poland’s Tusk lauded: “We want to spend our money on Ukraine.” But a closer look shows that European taxpayers’ money “spent on Ukraine” will go to a scheme called the European Peace Facility, which since its inception has been promoting war instead of peace and enriched shady operators.
The problems bothering the three European leaders in Berlin seem clear. A $60 billion bill aimed at supporting Ukraine’s “war effort” has got stuck in the US Congress and $300 million worth batch of arms that the US recently sent to Kiev is obviously not enough to stop the gradual retreat of Zelensky’s troops.
So, Scholz, Macron and Tusk felt an urgent need to create the impression that “Europeans are ready to step in” and compensate for the military-industrial complex of the United States, with the EU sending deadly “gifts” to Ukrainians. This reimbursement is supposed to be done through the grossly misnamed and off-budget scheme European Peace Facility (EPF).
The Fund Worth Billions
The EPF fund was established in 2021 and was initially used to reimburse European producers of arms that were sent to “EU-friendly dictators in Africa” – an expression used by the fund’s critics in Western media. But from February 2022, the EPF started operating with billions and devoted itself entirely to arming Russia’s adversaries in Ukraine and other post-Soviet countries.
On the surface, the EPF’s operations make an impression: “The EU agrees to €5 billion in Ukraine military aid,” “EU cash for Ukraine” – such headlines were omnipresent in the Western media last week. The EU member countries’ envoys in Brussels recently indeed agreed to increase the EPF’s assets to €17 billion, of which €11 billion are meant for Ukraine. (So far, the EPF has already spent €6.1 billion of taxpayers’ money on supplying Zelensky’s regime with arms.)
However, the European Conservative, a Budapest-based media outlet, reports that “it is theoretically possible that no actual money reaches the EPF under the agreement.”
Why? The EU has become a victim of its own hypocrisy. According to the EU’s legislation, the European Union is a peaceful organization that cannot legally finance any war effort directly, despite member countries fighting in just about all the major wars since 1991 – from Iraq and Afghanistan to Libya and Yugoslavia. Hence the need for this “peace” fund, which uses European money, but legally is not a part of the EU budget system with its strict regulations, the outlet writes.
Obligations – In Money Or Weapons
So, all 27 countries of the European Union are supposed to make contributions to the EPF, depending on the relative size of each country’s economy. However, there is a provision that makes it possible for every country to replace its share in the obligatory payment of €5 billion by “an in-kind donation.”
This means that instead of donating money, Estonia or Germany could just “donate” weapons (including old ones) to this venerable “peace” fund. This opens the door to schemes.
“The fine print specifies that for every $2 worth of military equipment donation member states can deduct $1 from their required money donation to EPF – with no limit on deductions,” The European Conservative writes.
So, if we read the fine print, the news about the €5 billion ‘sacrifice’ of EU member states for the Ukrainian Army is not quite accurate: Germany, for example, may not pay an additional cent to the fund. Here is why.
As Politico reports, Germany has been the largest donor for the Ukrainian military, having given €17.7 billion in military supplies. Now Germany is supposed to pay €1.2 billion a year into the EPF, but as long as it gives at least €2.4 billion in weapons to Ukraine in a year, Germany is free of any obligation to pay money to the fund.
Showing Them The Money, Getting Arms For Oneself
However, if Germany is the biggest donor, then Estonia is the smartest schemer.
Earlier this year, Politico accused Estonia of using a loophole in the rules that the European Council adopted for the EPF. The bureaucrats in Brussels forgot to specify how EU members should calculate the procurement price of the weaponry they send to Ukraine’s war machine via the European Peace Facility.
So, Estonia (followed by Latvia and Lithuania) vastly overestimated the value of the old Soviet weapons that it provided. However the EPF still gave Estonia the money, which the officials later used to satisfy their country’s defense and consumer needs.
“They [Estonians and other EU members] are sending their scraps to Ukraine and later buying brand new war materials for themselves, using EU money,” Politico writes.
According to EU inspectors quoted by The European Conservative, the behavior of the Estonian government led by Prime Minister Kaja Kallas was a “particularly blatant case.” Estonia “topped the charts” of the EPF’s abuse schemes, demanding 91% reimbursement for the old weapons donated and raking in €135 million last year alone. New NATO members Finland and Sweden also demanded huge refunds, and Macron’s France insisted on 71% plus an obligation to operate only with European-made weapons.
“All in all, this is an unseemly story – Western countries pride themselves on their supposedly selfless military aid to Ukraine, just like they boasted of their aid to the insurgents in Syria. As a result, Syria and Ukraine were badly damaged largely by Western-made weapons,” commented Sonja van den Ende, a Moscow-based international affairs analyst with experience covering the wars in the Middle East. “But in reality this military aid is not selfless. We see at the example of the EPF how this aid actually helps to fill the pockets of big arms producing companies and of Western government officials.”
EU nation kicks out Orthodox Church leader
Metropolitan Eugene of Tallin and All Estonia during a service. © Sputnik / Sergey Pyatakov
RT | February 7, 2024
Metropolitan Eugene, the head of the self-governed Estonian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, has been denied a residency permit by the Baltic nation, forcing him out of the country this week. Tallinn has claimed that his public statements undermined national security.
The senior bishop, who has Russian citizenship, was elected head of the Estonian church in 2018. Local authorities announced last month that his request to renew his two-year residency permit had been denied, with the deadline to leave the country expiring on Tuesday.
After a church service on Sunday, he told other clerics and parishioners that it was the last time he would be conducting the ceremony for the foreseeable future. In his farewell address, Eugene said no person is given a cross that he or she is unable to bear, and urged the congregation to seek solace in the fact that the Christian faith has survived far worse times.
”This is not the time to be desperate. Not the time, because there are no persecutions during which blood is shed. And every time is a blessing in its own way,” he said.
The Church said its leader was given a final formal rejection of his residency application on Monday.
The Estonian Police and Border Guard Service, which took the decision, claimed in its January announcement that the cleric was deemed undesirable by the government due to unspecified public statements supposedly supporting Russia in the Ukraine conflict.
He “would not change his behavior despite numerous warnings given to him,” a district head of the agency, Indrek Aru, claimed, adding: “This decision does not affect in any way the Estonian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate and believers”.
According to Estonian media, in 2022 Eugene called for an end to the Ukraine conflict, which he described as fratricidal, and refused to put the blame solely on Russia for its outbreak, contradicting the position of the Estonian government.
Interior Minister Lauri Laanemets has branded Eugene a “Kremlin man” boosting Russian messaging, and claimed that the bishop answered directly to Patriarch Kirill, leader of the Russian Orthodox Church.
His de facto expulsion gives the Estonian Church “an opportunity to find a new leader, who shares our values and breathes in rhythm with the rest of the Estonian society,” the official declared, after denying that his government was interfering in religious affairs.
Sweden says undersea cable to Estonia ‘damaged’
RT | October 17, 2023
An undersea telecommunications cable connecting Sweden and Estonia in the Baltic Sea has been ‘damaged,’ the Scandinavian country’s Civil Defense Minister said at a news conference on Tuesday, in what is the second such occurrence in the region in the past month.
“We are currently unable to assess what has caused this damage,” government minister Carl-Oskar Bohlin told reporters in Gothenburg, adding that it is “not a total cable break but it is a partial damage to the cable” and that it remains operational. The Swedish minister said that the damage sustained to the cable was sustained outside of the country’s territorial waters and its exclusive economic zone.
The damage, Bohlin explained, appears to have occurred at around the same time as when the Balticconnector gas pipeline and a telecommunications cable between Estonia and Finland were damaged, on October 8. NATO, the US-led military bloc that Helsinki joined earlier this year, has vowed “a united and determined response” if an investigation determines that saboteurs were responsible.
Finland has said that it cannot rule out a “state actor” being behind the October 8 incident, and that it is reviewing vessel traffic in the area at the time of the suspected attack.
The Prime Minister of Sweden Ulf Kristersson warned last week of potential vulnerabilities to the “spaghetti of cables, wires, infrastructure on the seabed” that connects countries, transfers data and supplies energy in the region. “It is absolutely fundamental for data traffic, so the vulnerabilities today are much, much greater,” he said.
Adequately policing waters in the area is a “very intense” challenge, the head of Sweden’s navy, Rear Admiral Ewa Ann-Sofi Skoog Haslum said on Tuesday. “The challenge for us is to monitor this volume of water,” she said. “Everything that happens under the surface is deniable.”
Last September, the Nord Stream pipelines supplying oil and natural gas from Russia to Germany were ruptured, in incidents widely believed to have been sabotage. A culprit has yet to be identified.
Seymour Hersh, the Pulitzer-winning American journalist, published a report earlier this year in which he claimed, citing intelligence sources, that the United States executed a covert CIA operation to destroy the pipelines in collaboration with the Norwegian government. Washington has strongly denied the claims.
A competing theory, reported by Western outlets, has suggested that a team of Ukrainian commandos used a rented yacht to transport explosives to the blast sites, but that the CIA told the Ukrainians to abort the plan.
NATO Baltic Drills: West Attempts to Show Russia it ‘Owns’ Region Despite Members’ Weakenesses
By Oleg Burunov – Sputnik – 07.09.2023
Saturday will see the start of NATO’s major naval drills in the Baltic Sea that are expected to involve some 30 ships and over 3,000 service members who will conduct the war games close to the Russian border. What’s the goal of these maneuvers and what signs do the drills send to Russia?
When and Where Will the Drills Take Place
As many as 14 NATO countries are due to take part in the Northern Coast 23 naval exercises that will be held on September 9-23 off Estonia and Latvia, as well as in the eastern and central areas of the Baltic Sea near the Russian border.
The drills will witness the participation of 3,000 personnel from the US, Italy, France, Finland, Estonia, Denmark, Canada, Belgium, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, and Sweden.
Thirty ships and submarines, as well as up to 15 aircraft and various land units will be involved in the exercises, which have been held in the Baltics since 2007.
What’s the Main Message?
Germany’s navy chief, Vice-Admiral Jan Christian Kaack, said that during the drills, participants “will for the first time practice how to respond to a potential Russian assault in the region.”
He added that by launching the war games, NATO countries are “sending a clear message of vigilance to Russia: Not on our watch.” According to Kaack, “credible deterrence must include the ability to attack.”
“The idea of responding to a [possible] Russian attack here with a littoral (coastal waters) interoperability exercise seems to be aimed at morale building for NATO’s Baltic members, rather than the practice of an actual strategy of response to an expected Russian action somewhere in the Baltic Sea,” retired US Air Force Lt. Col and former Pentagon analyst Karen Kwiatkowski told Sputnik.
She underscored that by deciding to conduct such massive maneuvers in the area, NATO signals to Russia that the alliance is allegedly a military force that now “owns” the Baltic Sea, “mainly because it has brought on new members Finland and, soon, Sweden, and [because] the prior Baltic members of NATO, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are enthusiastically anti-Russia.”
“Yet none of these countries really have large naval forces, and like everything in Europe, the economic legacy of Germany still sustains the rest of the region,” Kwiatkowski pointed out.
Why Germany Leads Drills
The Northern Coast 23 drills will be led by the German Maritime Forces Staff from its new headquarters in Rostock, which will, in fact, become NATO’s regional command center responsible for directing operations in the Baltic Sea.
The ex-Pentagon analyst said in this vein that “this particular exercise is traditionally led by the German Navy”. According to her, the drills are the “first since the German government purchased the MV Werften shipyard, with an aim at converting it from a private ship-building enterprise to a large naval arsenal and expanded HQ.”
“Part of the upgrade of the German Navy and justification for the unprecedented German state purchase of a commercial ship manufacturer that failed (with the collapse of the cruise ship industry during the government-demanded lockdowns), was the conflict in Ukraine,” Kwiatkowski added.
Dwelling on Germany’s push to expand its Baltic clout, she said that German government spending in this region, and the militarization thereof, “may also seem logical” since the US-led Western neoconservatives seek increased domestic political control in the future.
Northern Coast 23 Drills and Regional Security
Notably, the Northern Coast 23 exercises come several months after Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna called the Baltic Sea a “NATO lake” in connection with Finland entering the alliance in April. As he explained in an interview with Newsweek, this NATO expansion is “extremely important” and a strategic game changer.
Kwiatkowski suggested that “the Western and US messages that the ‘Baltic Sea is a NATO lake’ will continue to be sent – as it has been done for the Black Sea, the Straits of Taiwan, and the South China Sea – with much the same impact.”
“Western bullying, even as its financial and military empire wanes and weakens, tends to be poorly received by the targets of that bullying, and the threats may increasingly ring empty and thus not have the desired effect,” she pointed out.
When asked what impact the upcoming NATO naval maneuvers will have on the security system in the Baltic Sea region, the former Pentagon analyst made it clear all this will depend on the alliance’s next steps.
“More practice with interoperability, growing familiarity with the littoral region, and the various naval and communication capabilities of these NATO countries [which take part in the drills] will tend to lead to more exercises of this sort, and enthuse the smaller Baltic members to spend more of their own budget on such activities,” Kwiatkowski said.
She added that it’s safe to assume that “the neoconservative foreign policy advocates and their military-industrial backers in Washington have a strategy and believe that threats and tweaks in their alliances will produce a specific outcome or response in line with that strategy.”
“I suspect the main response intended is to increase military and surveillance spending by all NATO members, in order to better control their own populations and domestic threats to their elite rule, and to some extent this is working. However, because the neoconservatives do not accurately perceive the strategies and goals of their selected enemies – Russia, and China – their own actions to shape the behavior of those competitors are inappropriate, and ineffective,” the analyst noted.
Kwiatkowski suggested that in “any serious east-west rivalry that might take place in the Baltic anytime soon, littoral operations will be limited to those related to emergency and evacuation.”
Сould Russia Be Affected?
It’s worth recalling in this vein that Russia has its own Baltic Fleet, headquartered in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, with ships’ crews typically observing Western naval exercises in the area from a distance. Russia last staged its own Baltic naval drills in early August 2023.
As for the forthcoming NATO naval exercises, they come amid the West’s frustration over Kiev’s “slower than expected” counteroffensive against Russian troops in Ukraine, which was described by Russian President Vladimir Putin as “a failure, not a stalemate.”
When asked what consequences could arise from the possible provocations and tensions created by the Northern Coast 23 drills and what the risks for NATO conducting exercises close to Russia are, Kwiatkowski stressed that “Any military operation or exercise poses risks of accidents, mistakes, miscommunication, confusion, and internal hijack or errors.”
“The more complex and less habitual the exercise, the bigger the risk. Combined with the hostile political leadership and possible agendas among the NATO countries at the heart of this exercise, and the presence of Kaliningrad nearby, as well as unpredictable activity from increasingly demoralized and angry Kiev politicians and activists, makes this exercise one to watch closely,” the analyst underlined.
Separately, Kwiatkowski added without elaborating that “close active contact between military forces, with possible surveillance and disruption of communications from both sides, misunderstandings, and accidents have caused problems between the Russian, Chinese and Western governments”, something that she said should be “resolved diplomatically”.
She expressed hope that “all sides will be careful, but added that “any objective person looking at military readiness and capability of a military response in the region, recognizes that it is Russia, and then the United States, who will decide how military emergencies are handled in this region.”
“The US president is for the most part a vacant shell, and it is not clear how important, time-critical decisions are being made in Washington, and who is making them. This, and the increasing desperation of those who do not wish to see a peaceful settlement of the Ukraine war, is worrisome,” the analyst concluded.
Anti-Russian paranoia turns against Estonian prime minister
By Lucas Leiroz | September 6, 2023
A crisis of legitimacy is rising in Estonia, with collective anti-Russian paranoia turning against the government itself. Local media spread data proving the involvement of Arvo Hallik, husband of Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, with business in the transport sector in Russia. Given the pro-Kiev mentality of Estonian politicians, the reaction was immediate, with the country’s president demanding explanations and even suggesting that Kallas should resign.
Hallik is one of the partners in the transport company Stark Logistics, which is said to have continued operating in Russia after the start of the special military operation in Ukraine, violating the Western sanctions imposed on Moscow. Outraged by the situation, the country’s president, Alar Karis, said at the time that Estonian society was “waiting for explanations” from the prime minister.
On that occasion, Kallas stated that she had no knowledge of her husband’s business and asked not to be questioned about matters concerning her personal life. But obviously that was not enough to stop the scrutiny against her. The case continued to have repercussions in the media, generating a real national scandal.
Kallas has not renounced her severely anti-Russian stance, stressing again and again that all business with Moscow must cease to comply with European sanctions on the country. She also maintained a solid attitude in saying that she would not resign from her post because of the pressure she was under. Her husband, in the same vein, announced that he was selling all his shares in the company so that he could end all his businesses involving Russia.
The situation became even more complicated when the investigators of Kallas’ personal life discovered that she had made loans to her husband in recent years, totaling 372,000 euros. Kallas explained that the loans were made before the Russian military intervention, but the opposition in Parliament began to question the source of these funds, investigating the possibility of corruption.
The political crisis has been getting worse over the days. A special budget control and anti-corruption parliamentary committee was opened in order to investigate Kallas and her husband’s business. The Prime Minister criticized the measure and did not attend the committee’s sessions, stating that her family’s personal affairs are not of interest to the Estonian State.
More than that, Kallas’ image is already becoming disapproved by the Estonian population itself. In recent polls, it was revealed that 57% of citizens want her to resign. The numbers are significant and reflect the advanced level of anti-Russian indoctrination to which the population was subjected, resulting in a collective paranoia that now turns against the country’s own leaders.
In the same vein, the Estonian president commented on the case once again on August 4, stating that Kallas should have resigned from her post at the beginning of the crisis. According to him, this would be the appropriate way for Kallas to deal with the case, as this would preserve herself and her family from the criticism of public opinion, avoiding the increase of scandals.
“Personally, I would have liked it if the prime minister had resigned at the beginning of the series of events that has made her the focus of the crisis (…) It would have spared her, her loved ones, the effectiveness of the government, and the credibility of messages coming out of Estonia”, he said.
In response to all the criticisms and demands for her resignation, Kallas emphasized that she intends to remain in her post, in which she claims to have always been fighting “for the freedom of Estonia and Ukraine”. For her, the opposition’s criticisms are an unjustified “witch hunt”, which is why she hopes that everything will be resolved soon.
“The witch hunt for me, unleashed by the opposition regarding the activities of my husband’s business partner, has exceeded all tolerable limits (…) [In Estonia] moral standards are much higher than in most countries”, she said.
In fact, this is the inevitable result of a problem created by the Baltic countries themselves: the extremist anti-Russian mentality. Choosing to automatically align themselves with NATO, the Baltic countries willingly embraced Western racist ideologies, ignoring the Soviet past and promoting ultranationalism and the rehabilitation of Nazism. The result of this is an irrational hate against everything involving Russia. Obviously, political leaders are not immune to this problem – and the Kallas’ case clearly shows this.
In the same sense, the situation reveals how much European sanctions are unreasonable and impossible to be fully respected. It is inevitable that bordering countries have some degree of cooperation in transport. The case is being politicized simply because it was spread by the media, but it is very difficult for there to be a complete end to the movement of transport companies from both countries in the border region.
It would be wise for Kallas not to seek a conciliatory policy between the anti-Russian mentality and her family businesses, but break with sanctions and launch policies to contain the advance of ultranationalism in the country. However, this scenario seems impossible to achieve, as she remains committed to the agendas that are being used against her.
Lucas Leiroz, journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant.
Estonian social crisis worsening
By Lucas Leiroz | August 8, 2023
Estonia is in serious trouble due to its irrational stance in the current NATO proxy conflict with Russia. Simultaneously focused on meeting Ukrainian humanitarian demands and the war plans of the Atlantic alliance, the Estonian government virtually excludes its own people from national priorities, which resulted in the aggravation of the internal crisis. Uncontrolled immigration, deindustrialization, economic instability and rising living costs are some of the problems that currently affect the country – and that will continue to do so if the government does not take a sovereign attitude.
Committed to helping solve the Ukrainian humanitarian issue, Estonia has been receiving thousands of refugees every day. Last year, the country received more than 115,000 Ukrainians – 62,000 of them planning to stay there permanently. This year, it is estimated that 300 to 400 Ukrainians are applying for Estonian asylum every week. Not all migrants are really in need of humanitarian aid due to the impact of the conflict. Many of the Ukrainian citizens in Estonia are men of military age who should be on the battlefield according to Kiev’s law, but who fled the country to escape the war.
Despite Kiev’s forced recruitment system being dictatorial and unacceptable, Estonia has no humanitarian obligation to receive people who are simply fleeing their military duties. These refugees get help from the Estonian government, and their stay in the country is subsidized by local taxpayers. So, it would be legitimate for Tallinn to have stricter guidelines on who to welcome into its territory – but it does not. In practice, any Ukrainian can enter the country, and the government remains silent, given its irrationally “humanitarian” stance, which prioritizes foreign citizens over nationals.
The Estonian state’s efforts to receive these refugees have been extremely expensive. In the first quarter of 2023 alone, Estonia spent more than 25 million euros on costs related to Ukrainian migrants. These expenses include benefits such as special protection by the Ministry of Interior’s forces, as well as Estonian language lessons provided by the Ministry of Culture.
Obviously, to finance all this, the government needs to reduce investments in other sectors. Unconcerned with the welfare of its own population and prioritizing foreign citizens, Estonia has progressively reduced its spending in the social sphere, which brings serious problems to the domestic situation. The cost of living in the country has been rising, and in 2022 an inflation rate of 19.4% was calculated. As a result, just as thousands of Ukrainians are entering Estonia, thousands of Estonians are migrating to other European countries in search of better living conditions.
In addition to the lack of control over migration, another factor contributing to Estonia’s social crisis is the country’s increasing militarization, both to meet NATO’s demands and to send assistance to Kiev. More than 1% of Estonian GDP is currently being sent in military aid to the Kiev regime, while another 3% is invested in internal militarization to meet the NATO-imposed defense spending goal. So, more money is invested in waging war than in trying to solve social problems, which obviously results in a crisis.
Furthermore, it is necessary to remember that, in the enthusiasm to meet the military interests of NATO and Kiev, Estonia has also generated many problems for its population with the expansion of training camps, affecting local agriculture. Alleging the need for improvements in its defense capacity, Estonia created the Nursipalu Training Area last year and is now trying to expand it. The main problem is that the testing area is located in an agricultural production zone, affecting the regional economy. The Estonian government has not offered local landowners sufficient money or new properties to compensate for the loss of territory from military expansion, thus discouraging agricultural production to favor the interests of NATO.
As we can see, unlimited cooperation with NATO and its proxy neo-Nazi regime has only harmed Estonia and contributed to the emergence of internal problems. In addition to migration and unnecessary militarization, there is also the issue of sanctions. The country has had many problems with decreasing cooperation with Russia in infrastructure. There was a drastic drop in cross-border rail transport, preventing Estonian industrial production from reaching the foreign market. This mainly affected the wood sector in the Võru region and metallurgical production in Põlva, which are strategically relevant points of the national economy.
In fact, all this shows how anti-strategic it is to follow NATO’s guidelines and adopt a policy of support to Kiev. Estonia is entering a serious domestic crisis just because it chose to accept the orders of the Atlantic alliance and engage in anti-Russian war plans. The best way to reverse this scenario and avoid national collapse is to take a sovereign attitude.
Lucas Leiroz, journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant.
Neighboring countries ready to pay Zelensky to stop conflict – Seymour Hersh
RT | May 17, 2023
Poland is leading a group of European nations that are secretly urging Vladimir Zelensky to find a way to settle the conflict with Russia, veteran journalist Seymour Hersh has reported, citing a “knowledgeable” American official.
According to US intelligence, other EU countries that want to see an end to the fighting include Hungary, Germany, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, Hersh wrote in an article published on his Substack page on Wednesday.
“Hungary is a big player in this and so are Poland and Germany, and they are working to get Zelensky to come around,” the unnamed official claimed. Those countries have made it clear that “Zelensky can keep what he’s got if he works up a peace deal even if he’s got to be paid off, if it’s the only way to get a deal.”
By “keep what he’s got,” the source was referring to the Ukrainian president’s villa in Italy and interests in an offshore bank, Hersh clarified.
However, Zelensky has so far rejected the proposal, while other major European players – France and the UK – “are too beholden” to the Biden administration, which is continuing to back the Ukrainian leader, the official said.
One of the main reasons why Poland and the others want the conflict to end is because the burden of accommodating Ukrainian refugees has become too much for them, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist wrote.
The problem for those countries “is how to get the US to stop supporting Zelensky,” Hersh’s source suggested.
He claimed that US intelligence is well aware that “Ukraine is running out of money and… that the next four or months are critical. And Eastern Europeans are talking about a deal.”
However, he added that “it’s not clear to the intelligence community what the president and his foreign policy aides in the White House know of the reality.”
The US is “still training Ukrainians how to fly our F-16s that will be shot down by Russia as soon as they get into the war zone. The mainstream press is dedicated to Biden and the war, and Biden is still talking about the Great Satan in Moscow while the Russian economy is doing great,” the official explained.
Russia has repeatedly stated that it’s ready to resolve the conflict at the negotiating table. However, it did not receive any proposals from Ukraine and its Western backers that it could consider reasonable.
Zelensky has been promoting his ten-point peace plan, which calls for Russian forces to withdraw to borders claimed by Ukraine, to pay reparations, and to submit to war-crime tribunals.
Moscow has rejected the plan as “unacceptable,” saying it ignores the reality on the ground and is actually a sign of Kiev’s unwillingness to solve the crisis through diplomatic means.
Estonia cracks down on Russian media
RT | April 5, 2023
Estonia has blocked access to 53 websites that were used to watch banned Russian TV channels, the Baltic country’s Consumer Protection and Technical Regulatory Authority (TTJA) said on Wednesday.
The regulator added that the crackdown was conducted in accordance with the EU sanctions on Russian media.
TTJA Director General Kristi Talving cited a poll commissioned by the Estonian government, which found that the trust of Russian channels has fallen from 40% to 18%. “Based on these numbers, we can say that the work to protect the Estonian information space has been effective,” Talving said.
Nearly 40% of people living in Estonia speak Russian, according to the official census. The country has had a sizable Russian minority from the time that it was part of the Soviet Union.
The EU banned the broadcasting of content from multiple Russian news organizations, including RT, in response to Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine, which was launched in February 2022. The EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, accused the news outlets of spreading disinformation.
Estonia separately banned six Russian TV channels in February 2022. The next month, the TTJA blacklisted seven outlets, including Channel One and news agency TASS.
The Russian Foreign Ministry has described the ban on the country’s news organizations in the EU as an act of censorship aimed at “purging the information space of the presence of any media that is an alternative to Western [media].”
Tony Blair launches new push for biometric digital ID for all citizens
By Ken Macon | Reclaim The Net | February 22, 2023
Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair is again promoting a controversial plan to give every British citizen a digital ID. This would entail the utilization of new biometric technology to store a person’s passport, driving license, tax records, qualifications, and their right to work status.
Sir Tony had previously attempted to introduce ID cards during his time as Prime Minister.
Tony Blair and former Conservative lawmaker William Hague have stated that a major transformation of the government with regards to technology is necessary in order to keep up with the ever-changing world.
However, there was backlash from their demands with Sir Jake Berry calling it a “creepy state plan to track you from the cradle to the grave.”
Blair and Hague revealed their plot in an article for The Times, in which they said “politics must change radically because the world is changing radically.
“We are living through a 21st-century technology revolution as huge in its implications as the 19th-century industrial revolution.”
The duo alleged that current politicians were “in danger of conducting a 20th-century fight at the margins of tax and spending policy when the issue is how we harness this new revolution to reimagine the state and public services.”
The duo demand digital IDs for every citizen – they also called for “a national health infrastructure that uses data to improve care and keep costs down, and sovereign AI systems backed by supercomputing capabilities.”
In an interview with BBC Radio 4 Blair highlighted how countries “as small as Estonia and as large as India’ are moving towards digital IDs.
“If you look at the biometric technology that allows you to do digital ID today, it can overcome many of these problems,’ Blair said.
Big Brother Watch condemned Blair for pushing for a digital identity system.
Big Brother Watch director Silkie Carlo said: “Sir Tony and Lord Hague are absolutely right about the need for the UK to take leadership in technological innovation, but this means protecting people’s rights and privacy, not reviving failed proposals for an intrusive mass digital identity system and a database state.”
Carlo added: “A sprawling digital identity system of the type described by Sir Tony and Lord Hague is utterly retrograde and would be one of the biggest assaults on privacy ever seen in the UK. The public has consistently opposed mandatory ID systems and there is absolutely nothing to suggest the public would want or support such a digital ID system now.”
Blair recently called for global organizations such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) and World Economic Forum (WEF) to push national governments to introduce “digital infrastructure” that monitors who has been vaccinated and who hasn’t.
Plan to blockade Russian shipping in Baltic Sea breaks international law and could provoke war
By Ahmed Adel | January 31, 2023
Western intentions to arm Estonia with the most modern types of conventional weapons which can target Saint Petersburg, as well as the installation of a medium-range anti-missile defence system, suggests that the Baltic country is wanting to challenge Russia despite its military barely even having enough professional soldiers to field a single battalion. At the same time, and just as provocative, Estonian authorities discussed an introduction of a 24 nautical mile coastal zone in the Gulf of Finland to limit the navigation of Russian ships.
It is demonstrated that Estonia is a highly active anti-Russian state that hopes its actions will receive Western tributes and rewards. However, in pursuing this goal, the Baltic country is going as far as wanting to break international law by restricting Russian shipping in waters it has a right to navigate through.
Moscow has repeatedly warned that attempts to deploy offensive NATO weapons will immediately provoke retaliatory steps. By Estonia wanting to place weapon systems that can target Russia’s second largest city, it cannot be discounted that the Russian military will deploy the Iskander system or another type of weapon to completely cover Estonia’s sea, land and air territory.
It is recalled that Lithuania attempted to blockade the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad in 2022 by stopping rail and road transportation and attempted to justify the action because of the EU’s sanctions regime. This quickly failed as a military and economic blockade can lead to a ‘casus belli’ – a reason for war, which would not insure Lithuania under NATO’s “mutual defence” article.
Larger European NATO countries are rotating their units, as well as military equipment, including aviation and F-16 fighter jets, in the Baltic countries. The Baltic countries are full of foreign soldiers and equipment as they themselves cannot ensure their own security despite implementing policies that are extremely provocative and hostile to Russia.
The Russian ambassador in Tallinn, Vladimir Lipayev, who disclosed that Western countries plan to supply Estonia with the most modern types of conventional weapons, also said that the Anglos had an interest in creating an anti-Russian outpost in the Baltic country in order to carry out economic, political, cultural and military pressure on Russia.
However, the Baltic countries are playing with fire as the Ukraine war has demonstrated that Russia is capable of demilitarizing hostile states. Even Ukraine, which has all the resources of the West behind it and the second largest army in Europe after Russia, is failing to stem back the tide of war and territorial loss.
With the Ukrainian military appearing to be on course for an imminent collapse in 2023, the US and UK are escalating tensions so that continuous conflict can drain Russia’s resources and attention. An internationalized effort to involve as many countries as possible in a confrontation with Russia only puts countries under a puppet status at risk of Russian retaliation, as Ukraine shows.
As said, if Estonia were to blockade Russian ships, it cannot be protected under NATO’s Article 5 as it initiated the hostility by breaking international law. Understandably, the leading countries of the EU do not want to be exposed to a Russian counterattack, which is why the Baltics and Poland are being used as cannon fodder instead – just as Ukraine currently is.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, a dividing line in the middle of the Gulf of Finland was agreed upon between Russia and newly independent Estonia. From this middle line, Finland and Estonia retreated three kilometres to allow Russia a six-kilometre channel for the free passage of Russian merchant and military fleets, thus actually making these international waters. In order to blockade Russia in the Gulf of Finland, it is necessary for Finland to implement the same policy. If Tallin unilaterally introduces such a zone in its territorial waters, then Russia has the option to use the Finnish part of the gulf.
For now, there is no indication that Finland plans to block Russian ships. If Finland and Estonia were to block Russian shipping, Moscow would have a strong case to appeal to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, something that would surely humiliate a country like Finland which likes to pride itself on supposedly adhering to international law very strictly.
Therefore, although the Estonian side may be enthusiastic in enforcing anti-Russian measures on the encouragement of Anglo countries, there is a likelihood that regional countries like Finland and Germany will not want a new front of tensions with Russia and will attempt to coerce the Baltic country to moderate its attitude.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
Sweden Confirms ‘Baltic Titanic’ Was Used for Secret Military Transports
Samizdat – 23.12.2022
The Estonia’s sinking in 1994 killed 852 people and is seen as the second-worst peacetime maritime disaster, ranking only behind the Titanic. With decades having gone by, questions about the tragedy abound, despite survivors’ numerous calls for justice.
In a sensational confession, the Swedish Armed Forces have admitted that the Estonia passenger ferry, whose demise in 1994 is seen as one of the worst maritime disasters of the 20th century, was used for secret military transports.
Ever since the Estonia sank on September 28, 1994, there have been rumors that the ferry had military cargo on board on the night of the accident. The accident commission appointed shortly afterwards dismissed the rumors as unsubstantiated fantasies. However, in 2004 Swedish media revealed that at least on two occasions, two weeks and one week before the accident, cars loaded with military gear were transported to Sweden.
In a new document, “a handful” of military transports from the Baltic countries with the Swedish Armed Forces as recipients were finally confirmed, yet without exact dates. However, the document features “electronic equipment without any connection to weapons systems” transported in civilian vehicles.
The Armed Forces’ written response also cited “Project Baltic Support”, a Swedish military aid program run in 1993-2003. Among others, the project included “equipment transferred to the Baltics” as well as “comprehensive training programs.”
The somewhat belated and mostly involuntary admission comes in response to an ongoing re-investigation of the Estonia shipwreck following a groundbreaking documentary that revealed a previously unknown hole in the ship’s hull and sowed skepticism in the official version. As part of their work, the investigators queried the Armed Forces about the military transports.
“At the beginning of the 90s, the Baltic states were newly independent and the Soviet Union had fallen, so there was certainly a great interest, among others, within the Swedish Armed Forces in getting military equipment from there,” Jonas Backstrand, chairman of the Estonia investigation at the State Accident Commission told Swedish media, citing interviews with both current and former employees of the Armed Forces.
Previous investigations hinted that the Armed Forces may have organized the transports in collaboration with officials from Ericsson Group. The Swedish Customs had promised the military not to check the cars’ loads, something it itself later confirmed.
Questions Remain
The passenger ferry Estonia sank on the night of September 28, 1994, about halfway between Tallinn and Stockholm. 852 people died in the disaster, which is now sometimes referred to as the “Baltic Titanic”. 28 years later, it remains largely a mystery despite survivors’ numerous calls for justice.
While a subsequent investigation formally placed the blame on a faulty bow visor that allowed thousands of tons of water to gush in, an abundance of alternative theories have flourished over the decades, including the Estonia being sunk by submarine. These theories, while officially dismissed as conspiracies, were nevertheless fueled by the Swedish government’s hasty decision to drop thousands of tons of pebbles on the site and thereby turn the wreck into a sea grave. Furthermore, the so-called Estonia Act was quickly railroaded through, establishing the sanctity of the site and prohibiting citizens from the signatory counties from even approaching the wreck.
Recently, 17 Estonia survivors penned an opinion piece in Swedish media, urging to add more resources and review the accident in its entirety. They stress that it took 27 years before they were allowed to testify and that the final report from 1997 didn’t fully agree with their experiences.
“If during the 90s it was sensitive to investigate because of security policy issues and Sweden’s need to assert its non-alignment, perhaps it can be seen differently now?”, the survivors wrote, alluding to Sweden’s vaunted vestiges of neutrality that went down in flames earlier this year as the Nordic country filed an application to join NATO.
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From the Archives
The lies about the 1967 war are still more powerful than the truth
By Alan Hart | June 4, 2012
In retrospect it can be seen that the 1967 war, the Six Days War, was the turning point in the relationship between the Zionist state of Israel and the Jews of the world (the majority of Jews who prefer to live not in Israel but as citizens of many other nations). Until the 1967 war, and with the exception of a minority of who were politically active, most non-Israeli Jews did not have – how can I put it? – a great empathy with Zionism’s child. Israel was there and, in the sub-consciousness, a refuge of last resort; but the Jewish nationalism it represented had not generated the overtly enthusiastic support of the Jews of the world. The Jews of Israel were in their chosen place and the Jews of the world were in their chosen places. There was not, so to speak, a great feeling of togetherness. At a point David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s founding father and first prime minister, was so disillusioned by the indifference of world Jewry that he went public with his criticism – not enough Jews were coming to live in Israel.
So how and why did the 1967 war transform the relationship between the Jews of the world and Israel? … continue
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