Russian invasion of Ukraine | Fewer tweets, more discussion

LARulz said:
But can he retreat and keep power? They'd be in a worse position than before no matter what and surely his close circle won't accept that because they'd have done it all for nothing in their eyes

Full mobilization would cause chaos and a nuke I still think is just a no go as I can't see whatever the chain is, all agreeing
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I think so, Putin doesn't need public opinion, he has demonstrated complete control. He can tell the people whatever the feck he wants, broadcast it 24/7 and follow the usual playbook for dissenters.
 
What do Russians in small cities think about all this? This video is enlightening. My take is that the situation in Russia is basically hopeless. Yes, Putin may fall, but sooner or later someone like Putin (or worse) will again take power.

 
frostbite said:
What do Russians in small cities think about all this? This video is enlightening. My take is that the situation in Russia is basically hopeless. Yes, Putin may fall, but sooner or later someone like Putin (or worse) will again take power.

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Situation is hopeless. Even the "opposition" are imperialists, it's just in their DNA.

 
Such a contrast of small cities to Moscow... (and I mean you can find a few reasonable people in Moscow ... not many, just a few)

 
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I dont know anything about military topic. I mean nothing at all. And i read around hete that the Kherson front is the better defended for russian army and thats why the eastern front experience more gains. But would be better to focus on kherson/western front? I mean, as much as they advance east, RA can always fold to R territory and attack back. While western, if the push southwest, they can not be outflanked on they northwest side. Or is the tactic to go south with the longest front posible to outstrechetch the R defenses instead of bottling west to east?
 
frostbite said:
What do Russians in small cities think about all this? This video is enlightening. My take is that the situation in Russia is basically hopeless. Yes, Putin may fall, but sooner or later someone like Putin (or worse) will again take power.

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Very sad, all people who's children and grand children will be killed over in the Ukraine. Utterly brainwashed and too stubborn to question the news they receive. I feel the same frustration watching that video as I did watching videos of people explaining why they voted Brexit. Sigh. We just have to hope that the internet generations are wiser when they grow older.
 
4bars said:
I dont know anything about military topic. I mean nothing at all. And i read around hete that the Kherson front is the better defended for russian army and thats why the eastern front experience more gains. But would be better to focus on kherson/western front? I mean, as much as they advance east, RA can always fold to R territory and attack back. While western, if the push southwest, they can not be outflanked on they northwest side. Or is the tactic to go south with the longest front posible to outstrechetch the R defenses instead of bottling west to east?
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If Ukraine takes back Kherson, they took back Kherson and open the road to Crimea. If Ukraine takes back the East down to the coast, they can cut off Crimea (and Kherson). So a win in the East makes it easier to win the Southwest.
 
4bars said:
I dont know anything about military topic. I mean nothing at all. And i read around hete that the Kherson front is the better defended for russian army and thats why the eastern front experience more gains. But would be better to focus on kherson/western front? I mean, as much as they advance east, RA can always fold to R territory and attack back. While western, if the push southwest, they can not be outflanked on they northwest side. Or is the tactic to go south with the longest front posible to outstrechetch the R defenses instead of bottling west to east?
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If you can cut off half their professional army in the west then you'll absolutely smash their ability to come back at you in future years as they'll have lost vast numbers of men and amounts of equipment. A routed disorganised army in Russia trying to sally over a well defended border region might not have much luck even if a lot of the Ukrainians are actually fighting over nearer to Kherson.
 
stefan92 said:
If Ukraine takes back Kherson, they took back Kherson and open the road to Crimea. If Ukraine takes back the East down to the coast, they can cut off Crimea (and Kherson). So a win in the East makes it easier to win the Southwest.
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But lets say, once cut off as UA reach mariupol, couldnt russia attack from middlish section east from russia territory and from melitopol front and pocket the south eastern U front?

RA has a massive advantadge that UA wikl not enter into russian territory
 
4bars said:
But lets say, once cut off as UA reach mariupol, couldnt russia attack from middlish section east from russia territory and from melitopol front and pocket the south eastern U front?

RA has a massive advantadge that UA wikl not enter into russian territory
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Sure Russia could, but the question is - using which kind of army? If Russia was able to push forward they could do so from the current front, which is just parallel to the border. But they can't, they are retreating. So it's not likely that they will push from that direction, and even if they do they only have recruits left with very little experience and training and very little appropriate equipment. The strong army units already are in Ukraine and trapping them means they can't attack again soon.
 
stefan92 said:
Sure Russia could, but the question is - using which kind of army? If Russia was able to push forward they could do so from the current front, which is just parallel to the border. But they can't, they are retreating. So it's not likely that they will push from that direction, and even if they do they only have recruits left with very little experience and training and very little appropriate equipment. The strong army units already are in Ukraine and trapping them means they can't attack again soon.
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Lots of if, but whatever do must be the correct thing to do as more than probable they have the best intel and strategies possible with US and europe backing them up
 
If what I’m hearing is accurate, the electoral commission from AFU might soon be in Kherson to examine the votes.
 
Rajma said:
Kherson is done.
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It seems that way for now. Anymore sources?

The AFU taking Kherson would be huge. Taking small towns and villages in the north are being made out like no big deal on the other side.
 
The United said:
It seems that way for now. Anymore sources?

The AFU taking Kherson would be huge. Taking small towns and villages in the north are being made out like no big deal on the other side.
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By the looks of it they’re retreating to the other side of Dnipro, as this is the only sensible explanation to what’s currently unfolding going by the rumours otherwise it’s an epic chaos.
 
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1577324136220839937.html

Found this interesting thread. TLDR, a poorly organized retreat could be as dangerous as the enemy's biggest offensive. Russia's best strategy would be to progressively abandon Kherson and dig in behind the Dnieper river, protecting Crimea and Zaporizhzhia in the process. Nevertheless, since losing the recently annexed Kherson is politically unacceptable, they will fall into a trap. Politics have defeated common sense.
 
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The successes of the Ukraine army are so compelling it makes me wonder - what was the Russian doing differently in the beginning that allowed them to take so much territory in the first place compared to now?

Or is it all down to Ukraine levelling up?
 
B20 said:
The successes of the Ukraine army are so compelling it makes me wonder - what was the Russian doing differently in the beginning that allowed them to take so much territory in the first place compared to now?

Or is it all down to Ukraine levelling up?
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It was discussed at the start that their tactics are quite old fashioned and outdated. Essentially racing through and occupying ground at speed rather than solidifying territory then mounting mini offensives as they go forward.

I would imagine that, along with logistics (they couldn’t get their supplies long distances, remember the convoy?) and the introduction of NATO help to the UA.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_operation
 
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B20 said:
The successes of the Ukraine army are so compelling it makes me wonder - what was the Russian doing differently in the beginning that allowed them to take so much territory in the first place compared to now?

Or is it all down to Ukraine levelling up?
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Ukraine wasn't able to meet them in an open battle, but had the abilities and equipment to strike behind the Russian lines. This meant that they had to allow the Russians to enter Ukrainian territory.

Meanwhile they got much more equipment and were able to hit the Russian forces, so that the balance tipped in their favour.

So it's not so much that the Russians did anything differently, more that Ukraine follow their master plan from beginning of the war until now.
 
B20 said:
The successes of the Ukraine army are so compelling it makes me wonder - what was the Russian doing differently in the beginning that allowed them to take so much territory in the first place compared to now?

Or is it all down to Ukraine levelling up?
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This is what the Ukrainian top military chief said in an interview with TIME. Mind, it's been reported if I recall correctly that there was some treachery regarding Kherson.

The aim, in other words, was to allow the Russians to advance and then destroy their columns in the front and supply lines in the rear. By the sixth day of the invasion, he concluded it was working. The Russians had failed to take airports around Kyiv and had advanced deep enough to begin straining supply lines, leaving them exposed.
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B20 said:
The successes of the Ukraine army are so compelling it makes me wonder - what was the Russian doing differently in the beginning that allowed them to take so much territory in the first place compared to now?

Or is it all down to Ukraine levelling up?
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In the early months Russia had success gaining ground through mass artillery bombardment (WW2 style tactics) that the Ukranians had no counter to. But that changed when they got missile systems like HIMARS and were able to strike at Russian artillery dumps and logistics.
 
Krakenzero said:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1577324136220839937.html

Found this interesting thread. TLDR, a poorly organized retreat could be as dangerous as the enemy's biggest offensive. Russia's best strategy would be to progressively abandon Kherson and dig in behind the Dnieper river, protecting Crimea and Zaporizhzhia in the process. Nevertheless, since losing the recently annexed Kherson is politically unacceptable, they will fall into a trap. Politics have defeated common sense.
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Somewhat of a modern Stalingrad
 
Krakenzero said:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1577324136220839937.html

Found this interesting thread. TLDR, a poorly organized retreat could be as dangerous as the enemy's biggest offensive. Russia's best strategy would be to progressively abandon Kherson and dig in behind the Dnieper river, protecting Crimea and Zaporizhzhia in the process. Nevertheless, since losing the recently annexed Kherson is politically unacceptable, they will fall into a trap. Politics have defeated common sense.
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“Retreating to the Inhulets would be what a complete moron does... so the russians will do it.”
 
A really beautiful article in our biggest weekly newspapers today, as I shared it with my OSRS community friends, I thought it is worth sharing here also, take time for it.

Eesti Ekspress interviewed the heads of Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian security agencies and some employees. Here is their view of Russia .



The photo on the work certificate of Aleksander Toots is worn and the edges of the certificate are slightly frayed. She looks much younger in the photo than she does now: with short hair and sharp features. Next summer it will be 30 years since Toots' first day of work in the security police. How he celebrates it, I don't know. He spends most of his time in nature, doing farm work, but he doesn't say where. "Let's not try to profile me," he says with a cool smile when I ask about his favorite book. "Let's not make the opponent's life easier."



For the last 15 of these 30 years, Toots has been dealing with Russia. Tried to anticipate their steps, surprised them myself. Tracked down spies, many of whom are his former colleagues. When I ask him what he felt when he interrogated Aleksei Dressen for the first time, he doesn't say anything at first. Dressen was his co-worker. Once his superior, later his subordinate. They greeted in the morning, waved when leaving, maybe sometimes tapped the toes of their shoes against car tires while talking. Until it came out that Dressen is a traitor and works for Russia.



"Details," he says curtly when I ask what gave Dressen away. But when Toots finally sat down at the table, with a new colleague, maybe even a good acquaintance, handcuffed on the other side, Toots said he didn't feel much. "You don't make rash decisions," he says. During our meetings, he only gets upset for a moment - when I ask if I could interview Eston Kohver . Emotionlessness is not just a character trait. This is Alexander Toots' strategic weapon in the fight against Russia.



"Your advantage is that you are balanced by nature," Russian intelligence people have told Toots. Dressen, too, had expected Toots to become emotional during the interrogation, and when that didn't happen, lost ground. They can't do that. Or you can't. They get emotional. They get angry, irritated, confused. At some point, Russian agents can't control things anymore - and can't help it. It's that simple. "Russia does not understand," as the Russians themselves say.



According to Toots, the entire Russian society is characterized by pokazukha : we show that everything is fine, but in reality there is nothing like that. At least in part, according to him, it also concerns the special services there - what if the system is powerful and there are thousands of agents.



"Bardakk is a specialty of their culture. A Russian must always have a shepherd, and if there is no shepherd, anarchy reigns," says Toots, who grew up in Kohtla-Järve. He himself consistently uses the word "adversary" when talking about Russia, never "enemy", because that word is too charged. It is not necessary. When fighting Russia, you have to consider that they can be too emotional, but they are also relentless. They are big, ambitious, ruthless - and cruel.



Butch's horrors didn't surprise Toots. They did not surprise anyone from counterintelligence in Estonia, Latvia or Lithuania that I spoke to. They know how the Russians behaved in the Baltic states during World War II. How they have behaved in the past. How they always behave. This knowledge is not available in the West. "They're lucky," says Toots. "We are a buffer between them and Russia, they have forgotten a lot and think that Russia is like them." But it is not.



The question is not about Putin . "We watched with concern when, when the war broke out, it was said that it was only Putin's war," says Normunds Mežviets , the head of the Latvian National Security Service, as we sit in the voting office of a nondescript office building on the outskirts of Riga. He speaks quietly, precisely and quickly - just like your favorite psychiatrist. Mezhviets knows Russians. He grew up among Russian children and fistfights were common. "I saw the Russian mentality every day," he says. The counterintelligence people of other Baltic countries repeat the same.



"It is clear that you cannot blame the nation in the abstract," says Arnold Sinisalu , the long-term head of the Estonian Defense Police . "But society and nation are one whole. The state brainwashes, but a little bit of chauvinism still comes from the people." When Darius Jauniškis , the head of the Lithuanian National Security Agency, was serving in the army, he was often approached by a Russian soldier who wanted to subjugate him. "I fought with them," says Jauniškis. “Because I knew that if you submit, so be it, you are his slave. But if you fight back, you might even earn his respect."



When I ask how many fights like this he's had, he moves his hands a bit, with a talismanic wristband attached to one wrist, and says a lot. Very much. He doesn't casually talk about these fights. In his agency, he uses this experience as a learning material, tells younger colleagues and generalizes it into a broader analysis of Russia: they recognize only power.



This is exactly how the Baltic counterintelligence people talk about Russia: not as "her", but "them". The war in Ukraine is not Putin's war. Cruelty is not Putin's cruelty. According to them, rapes, killings, gouging out eyes, hangings, burnings - all this is not a special Putin tactic. This, they say, is all of Russia. "The majority of Russians are guilty," says Arnold Sinisalu.



Their Western counterparts have sometimes found this hard to believe. "They were certainly more naive and optimistic than us," says a counterintelligence employee of one of the Baltic states. "When we started to explain to our partners that Russia cannot be trusted, they denied it," adds another, visibly upset. Georgia, Crimea - nothing changed. "And that's how we got to 2022," he says. Several people suggest that when meeting their Western partners, the Balts never get tired of reminding them of their naivety.



According to Aleksander Toots, there is actually nothing to blame on the Western special services. "They know Russia well enough," he says. Agents who are intimately familiar with Russian affairs share a common understanding of Russia and its dangerousness across Europe and beyond.



The problems are at the level of leaders of security agencies and politicians. Denial. Denial. Or reducing everything to Putin and his entourage, because one must not be racist and think that all Russians are the same or that there are some national characteristics.



Baltic counterintelligence people do not make any such conclusions about Russia. "Our understanding has been absolutely different from that of the West," says one. We share the world with a country where almost an entire society recognizes only force. The war in Ukraine is not a surprise. That's how it had to go. And will go again at some point.



Personal experience



The people I meet were born in the late 1960s or early 1970s. Their childhood was so much among Russians that Aleksander Toots's voice has a gentle Russian accent when he speaks faster. They went to the Russian army. "Stupidity and stupidity," Arnold Sinisalu remembers his superiors and colleagues. Toots saw dedovshchina every day , the violent subjugation of the younger ones.



When the counterintelligence leaders of the Baltic countries meet, they speak in English, but they could also communicate in Russian. Everyone is so fluent in it that when Arnold Sinisalu and Aleksander Toots start quoting Russian expressions, one starts and the other finishes. "We'll catch them somewhere and shoot them down," they remind one of Putin's sentences and draw attention to a word in this sentence that comes from the vocabulary of street thugs.



This, they say, is no accident. It is in that stratum that it is worth looking for the behavior patterns of Putin and his entourage. It has nothing in common with Western leaders who have attended private schools wearing dark green suits, later studied political philosophy at Harvard, and always keep their salad fork on the far right. Of course, according to them, there are many intelligent, fascinating, sincere and warm people in Russia, but they do not determine the basic tonality of society.



"If you want to know Russia, don't go to St. Petersburg or Moscow," says Aleksander Toots. He once worked for half a year in Kroonlinna - a stone's throw from St. Petersburg, but the people were completely different. The table was set with a hat on, and no one had heard of table manners. Everything around fell apart, the legs of the chair almost fell off, but as if someone had tried to fix something - there was none. “Uh…” and slapped his hand. Because there is something that the West will never understand: Russian society is used to suffering. What would drive people to the streets in Paris doesn't even make anyone scratch their heads in Novosibirsk. "Russia cannot be understood through analyzes and books," adds Darius Jauniškis. "You'll have to live there for a while."



They haven't been to Russia for a long time, at least not officially. But they have seen enough Russian villages without permanent electricity, normal streets, and not even sinkholes. It's true, there's rarely anything to do there, because there isn't much food in those places. There is only vague pride in being so big - and, as it were, strong.



A person who has often visited smaller places in Russia describes the local history museums there: one room with the history of the locality from the Paleolithic to 1941, and then five rooms from 1941-1945. Second World War. Victory over the Nazis. The only thing to be proud of in this wretched area, where an endless dirt field starts right in front of the museum and right here the neighbor sleeps like a sleepy fly.



There are those who say that the Baltic countries' experience with Russia also begins in the 1940s. "Look at what they did in the Second World War," says Arnold Sinisalu when we talk about mass graves, rapes, deportations in Ukraine. “It's exactly the same.” His maternal grandparents were taken to Siberia and both died there. What is being done in Ukraine today, we have all seen and experienced in Tallinn, Riga or Vilnius.



"Everything comes back, nothing changes," a 90-year-old former dentist tells me on my grandfather's birthday. Grandfather turns 96, and a few months later he sends me a draft of an article in which he calls to abandon expressions like "Soviet power" because there were no Soviets. "After the collapse of the Russian Empire, only the executors were recognized as evil," he writes angrily. He doesn't agree with that. All this was done by Russian society as a whole.



"There are no nationalities or a specific society," argues a Russian acquaintance of mine, a passionate anti-war. "The so-called nations are, in my opinion, an instrument with which the big imperialist conglomerates are currently fighting each other for global dominance in Ukraine. "A toad beats a snake" at the expense of the lives and destinies of working people - what nations are we talking about here..."



However, the people of the Baltic security services do not describe Russian imperialism and brutality as a military tactic, but as a general attitude of society. "I thought that over the years their mentality has changed and they have come to some conclusions after the war. That would be normal," says Jauniškis. "But I was wrong."



How can Russia jump to conclusions when they have never been held responsible. In the Second World War, the Nazis managed to rise to the top of the list of atrocities for a while, and this has made Russia forget what they did. "They have never had to be responsible," says Arnold Sinisalu. "And that has created a sense of impunity."



Empire



They won't tell me his name even when I ask. I only know his first name and that he is a historian and works alongside spies and detectives in the Estonian Defense Police. The task of the historian (let's say his name is Peeter, for example) is to help unravel the crimes committed during the Soviet occupation in the 1940s and later. However, since it is Russia, they are also very useful for understanding today. No one would use Nazi historians to better analyze Angela Merkel or Olaf Scholz , but nothing has changed in Russia.



Peeter investigates how the deportations were prepared and carried out, or what was done to the forest brothers. He has searched for secret KGB cemeteries and rummaged through archives to find evidence of how the Russian occupation meant, among other things, a series of crimes against humanity.



He sometimes talks to Arnold Sinisalu, who, according to Peetri, is "an above average history buff". There is a definite reason for this. "In recent years, everything is reviving more vividly than we would have thought," says Peeter. He comes out of the archive and reads the daily news and sees that there is no difference - what happened then is happening now. "In the meantime, it seemed that their tactics were a thing of the past," says Peeter, "but now they are coming back in exactly the same form."



And yet he was surprised when the first news of Russian brutality in Ukraine began to trickle out. "I thought we would go back to the old rhetoric," says Peeter, "but the fact that the past comes back in its most robust and vulgar form was a surprise." Deportation. Rape. The fight seems to be against bandits, but in reality the children are being shot in the head.



On the table in front of us is a calendar with the logo of the Defense Police. It is now July, and I notice that at the bottom of the calendar is written: "The beginning of the battles in the Blue Mountains." These battles took place almost 80 years ago, and yet the counterintelligence people are reminded of them every year. Because history is more present in Russia than anywhere else.



"Our conclusions about Russia have not changed in the last 30 years," says Normunds Mežviets. The most important of them is the following: Russia wants to become an empire, and the means are not chosen on this path. "There are no countries for them," says Peter, "only areas and territories." There are only vassals or subordinates in their neighborhood - there is no third option for Russia. "We will never come to terms with the disintegration of the USSR," says Mežviets. As the Russian leaders themselves have said: Russia ends where it is stopped.



"They have the mentality of conquerors," says Darius Jauniškis. "Everyone around us is an enemy." Baltic counter-spies believe that official polls, despite everything, reflect the opinions of the local society quite well. "They feel like children who have been insulted and are now looking for revenge," says Jauniškis. According to him, the Soviet way of thinking is so deeply embedded in society that even the resistance dates back to somewhere in the 1970s: people sit in the kitchen, drink vodka and curse, but when the front door closes behind them, they obediently go to work and scrub there until the evening. According to Normunds Mežviets, however, the issue is not only in the Soviet Union, but the mentality of the conquerors is much deeper in Russia.



Surprisingly, the heads of counterintelligence in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania say the same name when I want to know where the current Russian mindset originates - Ivan the Terrible . A ruler who lived almost 500 years ago, who waged successful wars of conquest and showed extraordinary cruelty, even killing his own son in a fit of rage. Today's brutality and desire to expand is the cruelty and imperialism of Ivan the Terrible.



Regarding Ivan the Terrible as the root of today's Russia is not a fantasy of Baltic counterintelligence people. Only recently, Peeter read a long laudatory article about the genius Cruel - a role model in the new Russian propaganda materials. Russia increasingly uses history to justify its current actions. Under the statue, which has a White Guardsman and a Red Army soldier together, is the text: "Both fought for Russia." Peeter almost starts laughing when he talks about it.



Historically, this is an absurd coexistence, but everything is possible in Russia. Imperialism, incessant expansion and at the same time nationalism, turning everything around the Russians - even such a ridiculous combination is possible in Russia and makes any normal development impossible.



But not only Arnold Sinisalu is interested in history. Aleksander Toots knows the history of his family back 300 years and rarely gets excited when talking about it. Toots is a descendant of Baltic Germans on one grandmother's side. Mistrust between nations is no stranger to him: when his grandmother decided to marry an Estonian - a simple peasant - it caused a big conflict in the family. Toots has carefully preserved all the letters that talk about it.



But people from the Russian special services are also interested in history. "In recent years, a lot of emphasis has been placed on shaping the present through history," says Normunds Mežviets. For the Russian special services, history primarily means conflicts and wars. Through them, an image is created, for which the war is fought at all, and according to Peetri, the security people have received "a special dose of history". From there comes their desire not only to expand, but also to take revenge.



Disappointment at being left behind by the West has made them either emphasize Russia's specialness or take offense, become bitter, think that something has been taken away from Russia. "Russians are not interested in truth," says one of my Russian acquaintances, "but justice." Even if this historical justice is only a thin fantasy.



You don't have to dig too deep into colonial history to understand today's France. Russia is different. Everything here is a muted continuation of the rhythms of the past. The current Russian special services existed in a startlingly similar form centuries ago, and even the basic nature of today's propaganda has been shaped during the tsarist era. The war in Syria and Afghanistan was played out in exactly the same way already in the Northern War and during the Livonian War - now there are tanks instead of swords and cherries instead of spurs, but the desires and behavior (and maybe even some of the equipment) are still centuries old.



The brutal culture of today's Russian army has been planted there since the time of the GULAG, and it is not accidental, but systemic. Fossilized hierarchies, the inability to take into account peculiarities, the existence of sole rulers in an information bubble, and at the same time the people's longing for a sole ruler, which is perhaps the most difficult to understand in the West - all this has existed in Russia for centuries, and will continue to exist in the future.



In the special service of the Baltic countries, they don't tell me about Putin, but instead they remind me of Peeter Esime , who killed all the Russians who supported the Swedes. "Beat your own so that strangers are afraid," Arnold Sinisalu begins and Aleksander Toots concludes the Russian principle. "Violence is their historical pattern and it will not change," Sinisalu adds calmly from behind his round glasses. "Human life has no value there."



Today's Butša is not only Butša, but a repetition of Katņ. The Olenivka prison bombing is a replica of the Sambir prison explosion, where 1,200 female prisoners died 80 years earlier. Historians look at Ukraine and nothing surprises them there. Because Ukraine is not only Ukraine. This is also the Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania of the 1940s.



They are not like us



"They only recognize power," says Jauniškis. "and if you use force yourself, they can even become your friends." This is something completely different from the jacketed diplomacy or even normal negotiations that the West is used to.



"In Russia, a loss is when both sides get something," says an Estonian entrepreneur who has been making complex business deals with Russians for decades. "For them, there must always be winners and losers in negotiations." And the winners can only be them. "Diplomacy is a sign of weakness there," says Normunds Mežviets. "Russia only accepts force. It is difficult to understand this in the West, because there they know different values - and it is believed that others do too."



Darius Jauniškis compares Russian society to medieval Mongols. Lithuania once fought with the Russian princes against the Mongol hordes, but looking at the behavior of the Russian soldiers and officers, it has the feeling that they have changed sides. "They're animals," he says calmly. "I would not like to think so primitively that there are such evil people in that society," says Peeter. "I would like to believe in something nobler. But it's that simple."



Jauniškis knows that it is not correct to say this. Of course, it is not a question of some national character trait - as if all Russians were born bad. "For generations, people have been born into fairy tales where life is shit, and there has almost never been freedom of expression - so what do you expect?" says one human rights activist, who does not agree with an entire nation being deprived of a human wage. We need to talk not about Russians, but about Russian society.



We are reminded that Russia is also Chekhov and barankas, big heart and kindness, piety and Dostoyevsky . But what did Dostoevsky write? Dostoevsky writes that a Russian person can be anything only radically - either radically good or radically evil. One of his heroes once takes "a national argument from his pocket - a huge fist, ribbed, gnarled, covered with red hairs" and it is clear to everyone that when this "deeply national argument firmly hits some object, only a wet stain remains".



Arnold Sinisalu, for example, reads Lyudmila Ulitskaya with interest , watches her interviews and was even a little surprised at how passionately Ulitskaya is against the war and yet she did not leave Russia before the war. a real Russian, but instead a Jew." But what is said about the Jews in Russia? "I would give a dozen Ukrainians for one Jew," says one of Sergei Dovlatov 's characters.



Contempt for Ukraine is not Putin's fantasy. It has much deeper roots, and before an interview with a famous Russian theater director, I am warned that he is generally a liberal anti-Putinist, but after the conquest of Crimea he had found: the right step. Because Ukrainians are not people.



Darius Jauniškis repeatedly uses the expression "unique way of thinking" when talking about Russia. This is not our ecosystem. It has its own rules, its own values. Even the jokes are different. Baltic counterspies have repeatedly tried to tell Westerners Russian anecdotes and vice versa - but no one laughs because they don't understand how it can be funny. Only Baltic people laugh at both.



"It would be too easy to say that the way of thinking of Russians has become this way under the influence of propaganda," says Darius Jauniškis. "Imperialism, chauvinism, brutality - they are in their education, upbringing and culture, but also in their values. And so for centuries." Jauniškis - and no one else I talk to from the Baltic counterintelligence services - does not believe that this could change.



Nothing changes



When the Baltic states regained their independence in 1991, Russia also became more democratic for a while. It was as if there were elections, there was talk of publicity, everything seemed to be turning for the better. But only the West believed in the revolution. "We made our plans with the calculation that after a year at the latest, Russia will be back to the way it was before and the empire will return," says Raivo Vare , who was the Minister of State of Estonia at the time, who has been interested in Russia all his life and lived there for 17 years at one time. According to him, the calculation at that time was based on "life experience". "But we were too optimistic," he then adds. Only a few months passed and Russia started manipulating Estonia... with oil.



Nothing will change, all the Baltic counterintelligence people tell me. "They already say in schools in Russia that the Baltic countries have disappeared for us only temporarily," says Peeter. He puts his hands around his coffee cup and then says: " Pushkin cannot lead a country like Russia." He does not believe that things will get better even if Alexei Navalny miraculously becomes Russia's leader. "The mindset is the same," he says. "Cleaning should be total. But that won't happen." The young people have thrown their hands, the system is massive, the demonstrations are getting nowhere, all the hopes cherished by the West for a peaceful democratic change are extremely naive and ignore Russia's history, way of thinking and reality.



Estonian ambassador to Ukraine Kaimo Kuusk only recently stood on the edge of the mass graves in Izjum and went to see the torture chambers there. He was told that the torturers were not Buryats, but spoke with an elegant St. Petersburg or Moscow accent. The only thing that could change anything is Russia's defeat in the Ukrainian war. "Historically, force has always worked against Russia," says Peeter. "No matter how much one would like to find another solution - there is none."



"We currently do not see any force capable of spreading democratic values in Russia," says Darius Jauniškis. "They demand the respect of all other countries, and only through brute force." Normunds Mežviets puts his palms together and lists the main points of the strategic assessment of Latvian counterintelligence with a dispassionate expression. Russia will not conquer Ukraine. Putin's way of thinking is starting to change, but when, that cannot be said. It depends not only on him or Russia, but also on the activity of the West. Then Mezhviets takes a short break. "But Russia's mindset will not change," he says. "Even Putin's death will not change anything. Russia is always a threat to our region, and not because of its leaders."



The counterintelligence leaders of all three Baltic states perceive that the attack on Ukraine did not mean a change in Russia, but it did mean a change in the West. Now, even at the political level there, it is gradually understood that it is not possible to treat Russia in the same way as other countries - but this line is thin. There is still talk of Putin's war. That ordinary Russians should not be persecuted. We must be understanding and humanistic, otherwise we are not European.



A controversial cocktail where, in the name of Western values, we have to convince ourselves that the corpses of Ukrainians are just the work of a few crazy war fanatics, and not the result of a much broader mindset that has lasted for centuries and always gone unpunished. Many are ready to save Putin's face - and the price is the corpses of Ukrainians with a rope around their necks and their faces wiped off.



Not only Russia is based on history. " Roosevelt was naive," says Arnold Sinisalu, when he recalls how Roosevelt tried to make Stalin his ally and sacrificed the Baltic States for this. He recalls how upset they were in the United States when a Latvian film compared communists to Nazis. Western optimism about Russia has been long-standing - although it has always been unfounded. "There has been a lot of cynical self-interest in the West," says Arnold Sinisalu. "The political leadership always gave the rules of the game, that you still have to communicate with Russia somehow." When I ask how he felt about the West's attitude, Sinisalu shrugs his shoulders. "What feelings can he still create," he says. "Not positive ones, anyway."



According to him, too, things have gotten better in the West since the start of the Ukrainian war, but not enough. When someone talks about the fact that only Putin's war is going on or that Russia must not lose face, Arnold Sinisalu calls it "stupid talk". As a historian, he remembers well: Russia has always had a turnaround only when they have lost a war.



It is possible that the more accurate Russian knowledge of the security agencies of the Baltic countries will also disappear soon - the new generations have come into contact with the local Russians, but no longer with Russia, and that is something else entirely. It is not a question of nationality, but of the growing environment. The younger generations don't know Russian anymore, they don't understand the nuances, they can get lost in the details. "I'm a legacy," says Toots. Does the new generation mean naivety? "On the contrary," says Jauniškis. "They have the experience of their parents' generation."



After the outbreak of the war, Russian intelligence activities in the Baltic countries have weakened a bit, but everyone believes that only temporarily. "My work for the last 15 years has been relatively routine," says spy hunter Aleksander Toots calmly and calls catching enemy spies "line work" and his work "a way of life". According to him, there have been no major changes. The only surprises are tactical.



When we talk in the early summer of 2021, he talks about Russian influence in schools or some transit businessmen who would like better relations with the colossal empire. A year later, of course, everything is different, the opponent's tools have changed, but here too you can be ready. "If you go in expecting them to be the same as us, you'll be disappointed," smiles Toots.



He once served in the missile division of the Russian army in Ukraine and once had to build a large asphalt site in two days. They had no gravel, no asphalt, no machinery. There was also no vodka with which all this could have been bought from the locals. However, the site was ready after two days. The tea roll was stolen and everything else was carried from God knows where. "You have to be creative," says Toots.



When the war in Ukraine broke out, he was looking at Soviet propaganda posters from World War II one weekend and got an idea. He called some colleagues, things were quickly discussed and already on Sunday evening they started sending files to the printing house. After a few days, posters were hung at Estonian border points, warning of recruitment attempts by the Russian special services and inviting them to report them. How successful was this campaign? "I have a selective memory," Toots chuckles, but admits that the number of converts was staggering.



One of our appointments with Toots is postponed for weeks. "There is no Tootsi," say the spokesmen of the Defense Police. "He has fast times in Narva," adds Arnold Sinisalu shortly. This is to be expected. During the removal of the Narva tank, Toots was guarding Ida-Virumaa - in his home area, among Estonians and Russians. When Toots gets back from Narva, he is not very excited. Everything went according to plan, but that doesn't mean it was easy. The Russian intelligence services were not very active. But in order to avoid riots, it was necessary to do what was the only thing that worked - to bring possible "necessary persons" to the plate by half force.



It is possible that Toots played Russian music when he got home from Narva. He listens to it often and would be happy to talk about Kino or Aquarium with his colleagues, but among them are historians rather than music lovers. We meet three times in total, and Toots talks a lot about Russia, but hardly about himself. "These may be my last interviews ever," he says. Over the past dozen years, the unit led by Toots has captured and brought to justice 21 Russian spies, all of whom have been convicted. I wonder if Alexander Toots means catching another spy when he says at the end of the conversation, “Wait. There will be news before the end of the year."



Lithuania's counterintelligence will not allow anything like that, but Vilnius, surrounded by Ukrainian flags, shows no signs of fatigue. A few weeks after the war broke out, Darius Jauniškis' father said how he never thought he would see another war in his life. "One day the Russians will wake up and realize what they have done," believes Jauniškis. "And their guilt is very painful."



When I leave the head office of the VDD in Latvia and the pens confiscated at the pass are returned to me, I ask the security guard if he has faster times than usual. He nods but doesn't say a word.



I am going back to Estonia. A few days later, great-aunt's birthday will take place. He will be a hundred years old and, according to his children, he is in good shape, his mind is sharp, and only a few years ago he climbed the roof himself to teach chimney sweeps. Only after February 24, he had to sleep restlessly. I read the news about Russia's invasion of Ukraine and I couldn't sleep anymore.



“She's scared,” her children tell me. "She is afraid that the rapists will come again."
 
If Ukraine successfully throws Russia from their territory, how does that impact the overall balance of power in the region in the long term?

For so long it's been a case of Putin throwing his weight around and demanding "do what I want or else". Nobody really wanted to incur his wrath because, well, it's big and powerful Russia. They can simply steamroll any non-NATO countries if they wish with all their military might. However, their military has largely been humiliated and their economy is crumbling. The fear factor is surely dwindling. Nukes is just about all they've got right now.
 
JuriM said:
A really beautiful article in our biggest weekly newspapers today, as I shared it with my OSRS community friends, I thought it is worth sharing here also, take time for it.

Eesti Ekspress interviewed the heads of Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian security agencies and some employees. Here is their view of Russia .



The photo on the work certificate of Aleksander Toots is worn and the edges of the certificate are slightly frayed. She looks much younger in the photo than she does now: with short hair and sharp features. Next summer it will be 30 years since Toots' first day of work in the security police. How he celebrates it, I don't know. He spends most of his time in nature, doing farm work, but he doesn't say where. "Let's not try to profile me," he says with a cool smile when I ask about his favorite book. "Let's not make the opponent's life easier."



For the last 15 of these 30 years, Toots has been dealing with Russia. Tried to anticipate their steps, surprised them myself. Tracked down spies, many of whom are his former colleagues. When I ask him what he felt when he interrogated Aleksei Dressen for the first time, he doesn't say anything at first. Dressen was his co-worker. Once his superior, later his subordinate. They greeted in the morning, waved when leaving, maybe sometimes tapped the toes of their shoes against car tires while talking. Until it came out that Dressen is a traitor and works for Russia.



"Details," he says curtly when I ask what gave Dressen away. But when Toots finally sat down at the table, with a new colleague, maybe even a good acquaintance, handcuffed on the other side, Toots said he didn't feel much. "You don't make rash decisions," he says. During our meetings, he only gets upset for a moment - when I ask if I could interview Eston Kohver . Emotionlessness is not just a character trait. This is Alexander Toots' strategic weapon in the fight against Russia.



"Your advantage is that you are balanced by nature," Russian intelligence people have told Toots. Dressen, too, had expected Toots to become emotional during the interrogation, and when that didn't happen, lost ground. They can't do that. Or you can't. They get emotional. They get angry, irritated, confused. At some point, Russian agents can't control things anymore - and can't help it. It's that simple. "Russia does not understand," as the Russians themselves say.



According to Toots, the entire Russian society is characterized by pokazukha : we show that everything is fine, but in reality there is nothing like that. At least in part, according to him, it also concerns the special services there - what if the system is powerful and there are thousands of agents.



"Bardakk is a specialty of their culture. A Russian must always have a shepherd, and if there is no shepherd, anarchy reigns," says Toots, who grew up in Kohtla-Järve. He himself consistently uses the word "adversary" when talking about Russia, never "enemy", because that word is too charged. It is not necessary. When fighting Russia, you have to consider that they can be too emotional, but they are also relentless. They are big, ambitious, ruthless - and cruel.



Butch's horrors didn't surprise Toots. They did not surprise anyone from counterintelligence in Estonia, Latvia or Lithuania that I spoke to. They know how the Russians behaved in the Baltic states during World War II. How they have behaved in the past. How they always behave. This knowledge is not available in the West. "They're lucky," says Toots. "We are a buffer between them and Russia, they have forgotten a lot and think that Russia is like them." But it is not.



The question is not about Putin . "We watched with concern when, when the war broke out, it was said that it was only Putin's war," says Normunds Mežviets , the head of the Latvian National Security Service, as we sit in the voting office of a nondescript office building on the outskirts of Riga. He speaks quietly, precisely and quickly - just like your favorite psychiatrist. Mezhviets knows Russians. He grew up among Russian children and fistfights were common. "I saw the Russian mentality every day," he says. The counterintelligence people of other Baltic countries repeat the same.



"It is clear that you cannot blame the nation in the abstract," says Arnold Sinisalu , the long-term head of the Estonian Defense Police . "But society and nation are one whole. The state brainwashes, but a little bit of chauvinism still comes from the people." When Darius Jauniškis , the head of the Lithuanian National Security Agency, was serving in the army, he was often approached by a Russian soldier who wanted to subjugate him. "I fought with them," says Jauniškis. “Because I knew that if you submit, so be it, you are his slave. But if you fight back, you might even earn his respect."



When I ask how many fights like this he's had, he moves his hands a bit, with a talismanic wristband attached to one wrist, and says a lot. Very much. He doesn't casually talk about these fights. In his agency, he uses this experience as a learning material, tells younger colleagues and generalizes it into a broader analysis of Russia: they recognize only power.



This is exactly how the Baltic counterintelligence people talk about Russia: not as "her", but "them". The war in Ukraine is not Putin's war. Cruelty is not Putin's cruelty. According to them, rapes, killings, gouging out eyes, hangings, burnings - all this is not a special Putin tactic. This, they say, is all of Russia. "The majority of Russians are guilty," says Arnold Sinisalu.



Their Western counterparts have sometimes found this hard to believe. "They were certainly more naive and optimistic than us," says a counterintelligence employee of one of the Baltic states. "When we started to explain to our partners that Russia cannot be trusted, they denied it," adds another, visibly upset. Georgia, Crimea - nothing changed. "And that's how we got to 2022," he says. Several people suggest that when meeting their Western partners, the Balts never get tired of reminding them of their naivety.



According to Aleksander Toots, there is actually nothing to blame on the Western special services. "They know Russia well enough," he says. Agents who are intimately familiar with Russian affairs share a common understanding of Russia and its dangerousness across Europe and beyond.



The problems are at the level of leaders of security agencies and politicians. Denial. Denial. Or reducing everything to Putin and his entourage, because one must not be racist and think that all Russians are the same or that there are some national characteristics.



Baltic counterintelligence people do not make any such conclusions about Russia. "Our understanding has been absolutely different from that of the West," says one. We share the world with a country where almost an entire society recognizes only force. The war in Ukraine is not a surprise. That's how it had to go. And will go again at some point.



Personal experience



The people I meet were born in the late 1960s or early 1970s. Their childhood was so much among Russians that Aleksander Toots's voice has a gentle Russian accent when he speaks faster. They went to the Russian army. "Stupidity and stupidity," Arnold Sinisalu remembers his superiors and colleagues. Toots saw dedovshchina every day , the violent subjugation of the younger ones.



When the counterintelligence leaders of the Baltic countries meet, they speak in English, but they could also communicate in Russian. Everyone is so fluent in it that when Arnold Sinisalu and Aleksander Toots start quoting Russian expressions, one starts and the other finishes. "We'll catch them somewhere and shoot them down," they remind one of Putin's sentences and draw attention to a word in this sentence that comes from the vocabulary of street thugs.



This, they say, is no accident. It is in that stratum that it is worth looking for the behavior patterns of Putin and his entourage. It has nothing in common with Western leaders who have attended private schools wearing dark green suits, later studied political philosophy at Harvard, and always keep their salad fork on the far right. Of course, according to them, there are many intelligent, fascinating, sincere and warm people in Russia, but they do not determine the basic tonality of society.



"If you want to know Russia, don't go to St. Petersburg or Moscow," says Aleksander Toots. He once worked for half a year in Kroonlinna - a stone's throw from St. Petersburg, but the people were completely different. The table was set with a hat on, and no one had heard of table manners. Everything around fell apart, the legs of the chair almost fell off, but as if someone had tried to fix something - there was none. “Uh…” and slapped his hand. Because there is something that the West will never understand: Russian society is used to suffering. What would drive people to the streets in Paris doesn't even make anyone scratch their heads in Novosibirsk. "Russia cannot be understood through analyzes and books," adds Darius Jauniškis. "You'll have to live there for a while."



They haven't been to Russia for a long time, at least not officially. But they have seen enough Russian villages without permanent electricity, normal streets, and not even sinkholes. It's true, there's rarely anything to do there, because there isn't much food in those places. There is only vague pride in being so big - and, as it were, strong.



A person who has often visited smaller places in Russia describes the local history museums there: one room with the history of the locality from the Paleolithic to 1941, and then five rooms from 1941-1945. Second World War. Victory over the Nazis. The only thing to be proud of in this wretched area, where an endless dirt field starts right in front of the museum and right here the neighbor sleeps like a sleepy fly.



There are those who say that the Baltic countries' experience with Russia also begins in the 1940s. "Look at what they did in the Second World War," says Arnold Sinisalu when we talk about mass graves, rapes, deportations in Ukraine. “It's exactly the same.” His maternal grandparents were taken to Siberia and both died there. What is being done in Ukraine today, we have all seen and experienced in Tallinn, Riga or Vilnius.



"Everything comes back, nothing changes," a 90-year-old former dentist tells me on my grandfather's birthday. Grandfather turns 96, and a few months later he sends me a draft of an article in which he calls to abandon expressions like "Soviet power" because there were no Soviets. "After the collapse of the Russian Empire, only the executors were recognized as evil," he writes angrily. He doesn't agree with that. All this was done by Russian society as a whole.



"There are no nationalities or a specific society," argues a Russian acquaintance of mine, a passionate anti-war. "The so-called nations are, in my opinion, an instrument with which the big imperialist conglomerates are currently fighting each other for global dominance in Ukraine. "A toad beats a snake" at the expense of the lives and destinies of working people - what nations are we talking about here..."



However, the people of the Baltic security services do not describe Russian imperialism and brutality as a military tactic, but as a general attitude of society. "I thought that over the years their mentality has changed and they have come to some conclusions after the war. That would be normal," says Jauniškis. "But I was wrong."



How can Russia jump to conclusions when they have never been held responsible. In the Second World War, the Nazis managed to rise to the top of the list of atrocities for a while, and this has made Russia forget what they did. "They have never had to be responsible," says Arnold Sinisalu. "And that has created a sense of impunity."



Empire



They won't tell me his name even when I ask. I only know his first name and that he is a historian and works alongside spies and detectives in the Estonian Defense Police. The task of the historian (let's say his name is Peeter, for example) is to help unravel the crimes committed during the Soviet occupation in the 1940s and later. However, since it is Russia, they are also very useful for understanding today. No one would use Nazi historians to better analyze Angela Merkel or Olaf Scholz , but nothing has changed in Russia.



Peeter investigates how the deportations were prepared and carried out, or what was done to the forest brothers. He has searched for secret KGB cemeteries and rummaged through archives to find evidence of how the Russian occupation meant, among other things, a series of crimes against humanity.



He sometimes talks to Arnold Sinisalu, who, according to Peetri, is "an above average history buff". There is a definite reason for this. "In recent years, everything is reviving more vividly than we would have thought," says Peeter. He comes out of the archive and reads the daily news and sees that there is no difference - what happened then is happening now. "In the meantime, it seemed that their tactics were a thing of the past," says Peeter, "but now they are coming back in exactly the same form."



And yet he was surprised when the first news of Russian brutality in Ukraine began to trickle out. "I thought we would go back to the old rhetoric," says Peeter, "but the fact that the past comes back in its most robust and vulgar form was a surprise." Deportation. Rape. The fight seems to be against bandits, but in reality the children are being shot in the head.



On the table in front of us is a calendar with the logo of the Defense Police. It is now July, and I notice that at the bottom of the calendar is written: "The beginning of the battles in the Blue Mountains." These battles took place almost 80 years ago, and yet the counterintelligence people are reminded of them every year. Because history is more present in Russia than anywhere else.



"Our conclusions about Russia have not changed in the last 30 years," says Normunds Mežviets. The most important of them is the following: Russia wants to become an empire, and the means are not chosen on this path. "There are no countries for them," says Peter, "only areas and territories." There are only vassals or subordinates in their neighborhood - there is no third option for Russia. "We will never come to terms with the disintegration of the USSR," says Mežviets. As the Russian leaders themselves have said: Russia ends where it is stopped.



"They have the mentality of conquerors," says Darius Jauniškis. "Everyone around us is an enemy." Baltic counter-spies believe that official polls, despite everything, reflect the opinions of the local society quite well. "They feel like children who have been insulted and are now looking for revenge," says Jauniškis. According to him, the Soviet way of thinking is so deeply embedded in society that even the resistance dates back to somewhere in the 1970s: people sit in the kitchen, drink vodka and curse, but when the front door closes behind them, they obediently go to work and scrub there until the evening. According to Normunds Mežviets, however, the issue is not only in the Soviet Union, but the mentality of the conquerors is much deeper in Russia.



Surprisingly, the heads of counterintelligence in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania say the same name when I want to know where the current Russian mindset originates - Ivan the Terrible . A ruler who lived almost 500 years ago, who waged successful wars of conquest and showed extraordinary cruelty, even killing his own son in a fit of rage. Today's brutality and desire to expand is the cruelty and imperialism of Ivan the Terrible.



Regarding Ivan the Terrible as the root of today's Russia is not a fantasy of Baltic counterintelligence people. Only recently, Peeter read a long laudatory article about the genius Cruel - a role model in the new Russian propaganda materials. Russia increasingly uses history to justify its current actions. Under the statue, which has a White Guardsman and a Red Army soldier together, is the text: "Both fought for Russia." Peeter almost starts laughing when he talks about it.



Historically, this is an absurd coexistence, but everything is possible in Russia. Imperialism, incessant expansion and at the same time nationalism, turning everything around the Russians - even such a ridiculous combination is possible in Russia and makes any normal development impossible.



But not only Arnold Sinisalu is interested in history. Aleksander Toots knows the history of his family back 300 years and rarely gets excited when talking about it. Toots is a descendant of Baltic Germans on one grandmother's side. Mistrust between nations is no stranger to him: when his grandmother decided to marry an Estonian - a simple peasant - it caused a big conflict in the family. Toots has carefully preserved all the letters that talk about it.



But people from the Russian special services are also interested in history. "In recent years, a lot of emphasis has been placed on shaping the present through history," says Normunds Mežviets. For the Russian special services, history primarily means conflicts and wars. Through them, an image is created, for which the war is fought at all, and according to Peetri, the security people have received "a special dose of history". From there comes their desire not only to expand, but also to take revenge.



Disappointment at being left behind by the West has made them either emphasize Russia's specialness or take offense, become bitter, think that something has been taken away from Russia. "Russians are not interested in truth," says one of my Russian acquaintances, "but justice." Even if this historical justice is only a thin fantasy.



You don't have to dig too deep into colonial history to understand today's France. Russia is different. Everything here is a muted continuation of the rhythms of the past. The current Russian special services existed in a startlingly similar form centuries ago, and even the basic nature of today's propaganda has been shaped during the tsarist era. The war in Syria and Afghanistan was played out in exactly the same way already in the Northern War and during the Livonian War - now there are tanks instead of swords and cherries instead of spurs, but the desires and behavior (and maybe even some of the equipment) are still centuries old.



The brutal culture of today's Russian army has been planted there since the time of the GULAG, and it is not accidental, but systemic. Fossilized hierarchies, the inability to take into account peculiarities, the existence of sole rulers in an information bubble, and at the same time the people's longing for a sole ruler, which is perhaps the most difficult to understand in the West - all this has existed in Russia for centuries, and will continue to exist in the future.



In the special service of the Baltic countries, they don't tell me about Putin, but instead they remind me of Peeter Esime , who killed all the Russians who supported the Swedes. "Beat your own so that strangers are afraid," Arnold Sinisalu begins and Aleksander Toots concludes the Russian principle. "Violence is their historical pattern and it will not change," Sinisalu adds calmly from behind his round glasses. "Human life has no value there."



Today's Butša is not only Butša, but a repetition of Katņ. The Olenivka prison bombing is a replica of the Sambir prison explosion, where 1,200 female prisoners died 80 years earlier. Historians look at Ukraine and nothing surprises them there. Because Ukraine is not only Ukraine. This is also the Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania of the 1940s.



They are not like us



"They only recognize power," says Jauniškis. "and if you use force yourself, they can even become your friends." This is something completely different from the jacketed diplomacy or even normal negotiations that the West is used to.



"In Russia, a loss is when both sides get something," says an Estonian entrepreneur who has been making complex business deals with Russians for decades. "For them, there must always be winners and losers in negotiations." And the winners can only be them. "Diplomacy is a sign of weakness there," says Normunds Mežviets. "Russia only accepts force. It is difficult to understand this in the West, because there they know different values - and it is believed that others do too."



Darius Jauniškis compares Russian society to medieval Mongols. Lithuania once fought with the Russian princes against the Mongol hordes, but looking at the behavior of the Russian soldiers and officers, it has the feeling that they have changed sides. "They're animals," he says calmly. "I would not like to think so primitively that there are such evil people in that society," says Peeter. "I would like to believe in something nobler. But it's that simple."



Jauniškis knows that it is not correct to say this. Of course, it is not a question of some national character trait - as if all Russians were born bad. "For generations, people have been born into fairy tales where life is shit, and there has almost never been freedom of expression - so what do you expect?" says one human rights activist, who does not agree with an entire nation being deprived of a human wage. We need to talk not about Russians, but about Russian society.



We are reminded that Russia is also Chekhov and barankas, big heart and kindness, piety and Dostoyevsky . But what did Dostoevsky write? Dostoevsky writes that a Russian person can be anything only radically - either radically good or radically evil. One of his heroes once takes "a national argument from his pocket - a huge fist, ribbed, gnarled, covered with red hairs" and it is clear to everyone that when this "deeply national argument firmly hits some object, only a wet stain remains".



Arnold Sinisalu, for example, reads Lyudmila Ulitskaya with interest , watches her interviews and was even a little surprised at how passionately Ulitskaya is against the war and yet she did not leave Russia before the war. a real Russian, but instead a Jew." But what is said about the Jews in Russia? "I would give a dozen Ukrainians for one Jew," says one of Sergei Dovlatov 's characters.



Contempt for Ukraine is not Putin's fantasy. It has much deeper roots, and before an interview with a famous Russian theater director, I am warned that he is generally a liberal anti-Putinist, but after the conquest of Crimea he had found: the right step. Because Ukrainians are not people.



Darius Jauniškis repeatedly uses the expression "unique way of thinking" when talking about Russia. This is not our ecosystem. It has its own rules, its own values. Even the jokes are different. Baltic counterspies have repeatedly tried to tell Westerners Russian anecdotes and vice versa - but no one laughs because they don't understand how it can be funny. Only Baltic people laugh at both.



"It would be too easy to say that the way of thinking of Russians has become this way under the influence of propaganda," says Darius Jauniškis. "Imperialism, chauvinism, brutality - they are in their education, upbringing and culture, but also in their values. And so for centuries." Jauniškis - and no one else I talk to from the Baltic counterintelligence services - does not believe that this could change.



Nothing changes



When the Baltic states regained their independence in 1991, Russia also became more democratic for a while. It was as if there were elections, there was talk of publicity, everything seemed to be turning for the better. But only the West believed in the revolution. "We made our plans with the calculation that after a year at the latest, Russia will be back to the way it was before and the empire will return," says Raivo Vare , who was the Minister of State of Estonia at the time, who has been interested in Russia all his life and lived there for 17 years at one time. According to him, the calculation at that time was based on "life experience". "But we were too optimistic," he then adds. Only a few months passed and Russia started manipulating Estonia... with oil.



Nothing will change, all the Baltic counterintelligence people tell me. "They already say in schools in Russia that the Baltic countries have disappeared for us only temporarily," says Peeter. He puts his hands around his coffee cup and then says: " Pushkin cannot lead a country like Russia." He does not believe that things will get better even if Alexei Navalny miraculously becomes Russia's leader. "The mindset is the same," he says. "Cleaning should be total. But that won't happen." The young people have thrown their hands, the system is massive, the demonstrations are getting nowhere, all the hopes cherished by the West for a peaceful democratic change are extremely naive and ignore Russia's history, way of thinking and reality.



Estonian ambassador to Ukraine Kaimo Kuusk only recently stood on the edge of the mass graves in Izjum and went to see the torture chambers there. He was told that the torturers were not Buryats, but spoke with an elegant St. Petersburg or Moscow accent. The only thing that could change anything is Russia's defeat in the Ukrainian war. "Historically, force has always worked against Russia," says Peeter. "No matter how much one would like to find another solution - there is none."



"We currently do not see any force capable of spreading democratic values in Russia," says Darius Jauniškis. "They demand the respect of all other countries, and only through brute force." Normunds Mežviets puts his palms together and lists the main points of the strategic assessment of Latvian counterintelligence with a dispassionate expression. Russia will not conquer Ukraine. Putin's way of thinking is starting to change, but when, that cannot be said. It depends not only on him or Russia, but also on the activity of the West. Then Mezhviets takes a short break. "But Russia's mindset will not change," he says. "Even Putin's death will not change anything. Russia is always a threat to our region, and not because of its leaders."



The counterintelligence leaders of all three Baltic states perceive that the attack on Ukraine did not mean a change in Russia, but it did mean a change in the West. Now, even at the political level there, it is gradually understood that it is not possible to treat Russia in the same way as other countries - but this line is thin. There is still talk of Putin's war. That ordinary Russians should not be persecuted. We must be understanding and humanistic, otherwise we are not European.



A controversial cocktail where, in the name of Western values, we have to convince ourselves that the corpses of Ukrainians are just the work of a few crazy war fanatics, and not the result of a much broader mindset that has lasted for centuries and always gone unpunished. Many are ready to save Putin's face - and the price is the corpses of Ukrainians with a rope around their necks and their faces wiped off.



Not only Russia is based on history. " Roosevelt was naive," says Arnold Sinisalu, when he recalls how Roosevelt tried to make Stalin his ally and sacrificed the Baltic States for this. He recalls how upset they were in the United States when a Latvian film compared communists to Nazis. Western optimism about Russia has been long-standing - although it has always been unfounded. "There has been a lot of cynical self-interest in the West," says Arnold Sinisalu. "The political leadership always gave the rules of the game, that you still have to communicate with Russia somehow." When I ask how he felt about the West's attitude, Sinisalu shrugs his shoulders. "What feelings can he still create," he says. "Not positive ones, anyway."



According to him, too, things have gotten better in the West since the start of the Ukrainian war, but not enough. When someone talks about the fact that only Putin's war is going on or that Russia must not lose face, Arnold Sinisalu calls it "stupid talk". As a historian, he remembers well: Russia has always had a turnaround only when they have lost a war.



It is possible that the more accurate Russian knowledge of the security agencies of the Baltic countries will also disappear soon - the new generations have come into contact with the local Russians, but no longer with Russia, and that is something else entirely. It is not a question of nationality, but of the growing environment. The younger generations don't know Russian anymore, they don't understand the nuances, they can get lost in the details. "I'm a legacy," says Toots. Does the new generation mean naivety? "On the contrary," says Jauniškis. "They have the experience of their parents' generation."



After the outbreak of the war, Russian intelligence activities in the Baltic countries have weakened a bit, but everyone believes that only temporarily. "My work for the last 15 years has been relatively routine," says spy hunter Aleksander Toots calmly and calls catching enemy spies "line work" and his work "a way of life". According to him, there have been no major changes. The only surprises are tactical.



When we talk in the early summer of 2021, he talks about Russian influence in schools or some transit businessmen who would like better relations with the colossal empire. A year later, of course, everything is different, the opponent's tools have changed, but here too you can be ready. "If you go in expecting them to be the same as us, you'll be disappointed," smiles Toots.



He once served in the missile division of the Russian army in Ukraine and once had to build a large asphalt site in two days. They had no gravel, no asphalt, no machinery. There was also no vodka with which all this could have been bought from the locals. However, the site was ready after two days. The tea roll was stolen and everything else was carried from God knows where. "You have to be creative," says Toots.



When the war in Ukraine broke out, he was looking at Soviet propaganda posters from World War II one weekend and got an idea. He called some colleagues, things were quickly discussed and already on Sunday evening they started sending files to the printing house. After a few days, posters were hung at Estonian border points, warning of recruitment attempts by the Russian special services and inviting them to report them. How successful was this campaign? "I have a selective memory," Toots chuckles, but admits that the number of converts was staggering.



One of our appointments with Toots is postponed for weeks. "There is no Tootsi," say the spokesmen of the Defense Police. "He has fast times in Narva," adds Arnold Sinisalu shortly. This is to be expected. During the removal of the Narva tank, Toots was guarding Ida-Virumaa - in his home area, among Estonians and Russians. When Toots gets back from Narva, he is not very excited. Everything went according to plan, but that doesn't mean it was easy. The Russian intelligence services were not very active. But in order to avoid riots, it was necessary to do what was the only thing that worked - to bring possible "necessary persons" to the plate by half force.



It is possible that Toots played Russian music when he got home from Narva. He listens to it often and would be happy to talk about Kino or Aquarium with his colleagues, but among them are historians rather than music lovers. We meet three times in total, and Toots talks a lot about Russia, but hardly about himself. "These may be my last interviews ever," he says. Over the past dozen years, the unit led by Toots has captured and brought to justice 21 Russian spies, all of whom have been convicted. I wonder if Alexander Toots means catching another spy when he says at the end of the conversation, “Wait. There will be news before the end of the year."



Lithuania's counterintelligence will not allow anything like that, but Vilnius, surrounded by Ukrainian flags, shows no signs of fatigue. A few weeks after the war broke out, Darius Jauniškis' father said how he never thought he would see another war in his life. "One day the Russians will wake up and realize what they have done," believes Jauniškis. "And their guilt is very painful."



When I leave the head office of the VDD in Latvia and the pens confiscated at the pass are returned to me, I ask the security guard if he has faster times than usual. He nods but doesn't say a word.



I am going back to Estonia. A few days later, great-aunt's birthday will take place. He will be a hundred years old and, according to his children, he is in good shape, his mind is sharp, and only a few years ago he climbed the roof himself to teach chimney sweeps. Only after February 24, he had to sleep restlessly. I read the news about Russia's invasion of Ukraine and I couldn't sleep anymore.



“She's scared,” her children tell me. "She is afraid that the rapists will come again."
Click to expand...

I didn't quite follow all of it but it's a fascinating article.
 
JuriM said:
A really beautiful article in our biggest weekly newspapers today, as I shared it with my OSRS community friends, I thought it is worth sharing here also, take time for it.

Eesti Ekspress interviewed the heads of Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian security agencies and some employees. Here is their view of Russia .



The photo on the work certificate of Aleksander Toots is worn and the edges of the certificate are slightly frayed. She looks much younger in the photo than she does now: with short hair and sharp features. Next summer it will be 30 years since Toots' first day of work in the security police. How he celebrates it, I don't know. He spends most of his time in nature, doing farm work, but he doesn't say where. "Let's not try to profile me," he says with a cool smile when I ask about his favorite book. "Let's not make the opponent's life easier."



For the last 15 of these 30 years, Toots has been dealing with Russia. Tried to anticipate their steps, surprised them myself. Tracked down spies, many of whom are his former colleagues. When I ask him what he felt when he interrogated Aleksei Dressen for the first time, he doesn't say anything at first. Dressen was his co-worker. Once his superior, later his subordinate. They greeted in the morning, waved when leaving, maybe sometimes tapped the toes of their shoes against car tires while talking. Until it came out that Dressen is a traitor and works for Russia.



"Details," he says curtly when I ask what gave Dressen away. But when Toots finally sat down at the table, with a new colleague, maybe even a good acquaintance, handcuffed on the other side, Toots said he didn't feel much. "You don't make rash decisions," he says. During our meetings, he only gets upset for a moment - when I ask if I could interview Eston Kohver . Emotionlessness is not just a character trait. This is Alexander Toots' strategic weapon in the fight against Russia.



"Your advantage is that you are balanced by nature," Russian intelligence people have told Toots. Dressen, too, had expected Toots to become emotional during the interrogation, and when that didn't happen, lost ground. They can't do that. Or you can't. They get emotional. They get angry, irritated, confused. At some point, Russian agents can't control things anymore - and can't help it. It's that simple. "Russia does not understand," as the Russians themselves say.



According to Toots, the entire Russian society is characterized by pokazukha : we show that everything is fine, but in reality there is nothing like that. At least in part, according to him, it also concerns the special services there - what if the system is powerful and there are thousands of agents.



"Bardakk is a specialty of their culture. A Russian must always have a shepherd, and if there is no shepherd, anarchy reigns," says Toots, who grew up in Kohtla-Järve. He himself consistently uses the word "adversary" when talking about Russia, never "enemy", because that word is too charged. It is not necessary. When fighting Russia, you have to consider that they can be too emotional, but they are also relentless. They are big, ambitious, ruthless - and cruel.



Butch's horrors didn't surprise Toots. They did not surprise anyone from counterintelligence in Estonia, Latvia or Lithuania that I spoke to. They know how the Russians behaved in the Baltic states during World War II. How they have behaved in the past. How they always behave. This knowledge is not available in the West. "They're lucky," says Toots. "We are a buffer between them and Russia, they have forgotten a lot and think that Russia is like them." But it is not.



The question is not about Putin . "We watched with concern when, when the war broke out, it was said that it was only Putin's war," says Normunds Mežviets , the head of the Latvian National Security Service, as we sit in the voting office of a nondescript office building on the outskirts of Riga. He speaks quietly, precisely and quickly - just like your favorite psychiatrist. Mezhviets knows Russians. He grew up among Russian children and fistfights were common. "I saw the Russian mentality every day," he says. The counterintelligence people of other Baltic countries repeat the same.



"It is clear that you cannot blame the nation in the abstract," says Arnold Sinisalu , the long-term head of the Estonian Defense Police . "But society and nation are one whole. The state brainwashes, but a little bit of chauvinism still comes from the people." When Darius Jauniškis , the head of the Lithuanian National Security Agency, was serving in the army, he was often approached by a Russian soldier who wanted to subjugate him. "I fought with them," says Jauniškis. “Because I knew that if you submit, so be it, you are his slave. But if you fight back, you might even earn his respect."



When I ask how many fights like this he's had, he moves his hands a bit, with a talismanic wristband attached to one wrist, and says a lot. Very much. He doesn't casually talk about these fights. In his agency, he uses this experience as a learning material, tells younger colleagues and generalizes it into a broader analysis of Russia: they recognize only power.



This is exactly how the Baltic counterintelligence people talk about Russia: not as "her", but "them". The war in Ukraine is not Putin's war. Cruelty is not Putin's cruelty. According to them, rapes, killings, gouging out eyes, hangings, burnings - all this is not a special Putin tactic. This, they say, is all of Russia. "The majority of Russians are guilty," says Arnold Sinisalu.



Their Western counterparts have sometimes found this hard to believe. "They were certainly more naive and optimistic than us," says a counterintelligence employee of one of the Baltic states. "When we started to explain to our partners that Russia cannot be trusted, they denied it," adds another, visibly upset. Georgia, Crimea - nothing changed. "And that's how we got to 2022," he says. Several people suggest that when meeting their Western partners, the Balts never get tired of reminding them of their naivety.



According to Aleksander Toots, there is actually nothing to blame on the Western special services. "They know Russia well enough," he says. Agents who are intimately familiar with Russian affairs share a common understanding of Russia and its dangerousness across Europe and beyond.



The problems are at the level of leaders of security agencies and politicians. Denial. Denial. Or reducing everything to Putin and his entourage, because one must not be racist and think that all Russians are the same or that there are some national characteristics.



Baltic counterintelligence people do not make any such conclusions about Russia. "Our understanding has been absolutely different from that of the West," says one. We share the world with a country where almost an entire society recognizes only force. The war in Ukraine is not a surprise. That's how it had to go. And will go again at some point.



Personal experience



The people I meet were born in the late 1960s or early 1970s. Their childhood was so much among Russians that Aleksander Toots's voice has a gentle Russian accent when he speaks faster. They went to the Russian army. "Stupidity and stupidity," Arnold Sinisalu remembers his superiors and colleagues. Toots saw dedovshchina every day , the violent subjugation of the younger ones.



When the counterintelligence leaders of the Baltic countries meet, they speak in English, but they could also communicate in Russian. Everyone is so fluent in it that when Arnold Sinisalu and Aleksander Toots start quoting Russian expressions, one starts and the other finishes. "We'll catch them somewhere and shoot them down," they remind one of Putin's sentences and draw attention to a word in this sentence that comes from the vocabulary of street thugs.



This, they say, is no accident. It is in that stratum that it is worth looking for the behavior patterns of Putin and his entourage. It has nothing in common with Western leaders who have attended private schools wearing dark green suits, later studied political philosophy at Harvard, and always keep their salad fork on the far right. Of course, according to them, there are many intelligent, fascinating, sincere and warm people in Russia, but they do not determine the basic tonality of society.



"If you want to know Russia, don't go to St. Petersburg or Moscow," says Aleksander Toots. He once worked for half a year in Kroonlinna - a stone's throw from St. Petersburg, but the people were completely different. The table was set with a hat on, and no one had heard of table manners. Everything around fell apart, the legs of the chair almost fell off, but as if someone had tried to fix something - there was none. “Uh…” and slapped his hand. Because there is something that the West will never understand: Russian society is used to suffering. What would drive people to the streets in Paris doesn't even make anyone scratch their heads in Novosibirsk. "Russia cannot be understood through analyzes and books," adds Darius Jauniškis. "You'll have to live there for a while."



They haven't been to Russia for a long time, at least not officially. But they have seen enough Russian villages without permanent electricity, normal streets, and not even sinkholes. It's true, there's rarely anything to do there, because there isn't much food in those places. There is only vague pride in being so big - and, as it were, strong.



A person who has often visited smaller places in Russia describes the local history museums there: one room with the history of the locality from the Paleolithic to 1941, and then five rooms from 1941-1945. Second World War. Victory over the Nazis. The only thing to be proud of in this wretched area, where an endless dirt field starts right in front of the museum and right here the neighbor sleeps like a sleepy fly.



There are those who say that the Baltic countries' experience with Russia also begins in the 1940s. "Look at what they did in the Second World War," says Arnold Sinisalu when we talk about mass graves, rapes, deportations in Ukraine. “It's exactly the same.” His maternal grandparents were taken to Siberia and both died there. What is being done in Ukraine today, we have all seen and experienced in Tallinn, Riga or Vilnius.



"Everything comes back, nothing changes," a 90-year-old former dentist tells me on my grandfather's birthday. Grandfather turns 96, and a few months later he sends me a draft of an article in which he calls to abandon expressions like "Soviet power" because there were no Soviets. "After the collapse of the Russian Empire, only the executors were recognized as evil," he writes angrily. He doesn't agree with that. All this was done by Russian society as a whole.



"There are no nationalities or a specific society," argues a Russian acquaintance of mine, a passionate anti-war. "The so-called nations are, in my opinion, an instrument with which the big imperialist conglomerates are currently fighting each other for global dominance in Ukraine. "A toad beats a snake" at the expense of the lives and destinies of working people - what nations are we talking about here..."



However, the people of the Baltic security services do not describe Russian imperialism and brutality as a military tactic, but as a general attitude of society. "I thought that over the years their mentality has changed and they have come to some conclusions after the war. That would be normal," says Jauniškis. "But I was wrong."



How can Russia jump to conclusions when they have never been held responsible. In the Second World War, the Nazis managed to rise to the top of the list of atrocities for a while, and this has made Russia forget what they did. "They have never had to be responsible," says Arnold Sinisalu. "And that has created a sense of impunity."



Empire



They won't tell me his name even when I ask. I only know his first name and that he is a historian and works alongside spies and detectives in the Estonian Defense Police. The task of the historian (let's say his name is Peeter, for example) is to help unravel the crimes committed during the Soviet occupation in the 1940s and later. However, since it is Russia, they are also very useful for understanding today. No one would use Nazi historians to better analyze Angela Merkel or Olaf Scholz , but nothing has changed in Russia.



Peeter investigates how the deportations were prepared and carried out, or what was done to the forest brothers. He has searched for secret KGB cemeteries and rummaged through archives to find evidence of how the Russian occupation meant, among other things, a series of crimes against humanity.



He sometimes talks to Arnold Sinisalu, who, according to Peetri, is "an above average history buff". There is a definite reason for this. "In recent years, everything is reviving more vividly than we would have thought," says Peeter. He comes out of the archive and reads the daily news and sees that there is no difference - what happened then is happening now. "In the meantime, it seemed that their tactics were a thing of the past," says Peeter, "but now they are coming back in exactly the same form."



And yet he was surprised when the first news of Russian brutality in Ukraine began to trickle out. "I thought we would go back to the old rhetoric," says Peeter, "but the fact that the past comes back in its most robust and vulgar form was a surprise." Deportation. Rape. The fight seems to be against bandits, but in reality the children are being shot in the head.



On the table in front of us is a calendar with the logo of the Defense Police. It is now July, and I notice that at the bottom of the calendar is written: "The beginning of the battles in the Blue Mountains." These battles took place almost 80 years ago, and yet the counterintelligence people are reminded of them every year. Because history is more present in Russia than anywhere else.



"Our conclusions about Russia have not changed in the last 30 years," says Normunds Mežviets. The most important of them is the following: Russia wants to become an empire, and the means are not chosen on this path. "There are no countries for them," says Peter, "only areas and territories." There are only vassals or subordinates in their neighborhood - there is no third option for Russia. "We will never come to terms with the disintegration of the USSR," says Mežviets. As the Russian leaders themselves have said: Russia ends where it is stopped.



"They have the mentality of conquerors," says Darius Jauniškis. "Everyone around us is an enemy." Baltic counter-spies believe that official polls, despite everything, reflect the opinions of the local society quite well. "They feel like children who have been insulted and are now looking for revenge," says Jauniškis. According to him, the Soviet way of thinking is so deeply embedded in society that even the resistance dates back to somewhere in the 1970s: people sit in the kitchen, drink vodka and curse, but when the front door closes behind them, they obediently go to work and scrub there until the evening. According to Normunds Mežviets, however, the issue is not only in the Soviet Union, but the mentality of the conquerors is much deeper in Russia.



Surprisingly, the heads of counterintelligence in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania say the same name when I want to know where the current Russian mindset originates - Ivan the Terrible . A ruler who lived almost 500 years ago, who waged successful wars of conquest and showed extraordinary cruelty, even killing his own son in a fit of rage. Today's brutality and desire to expand is the cruelty and imperialism of Ivan the Terrible.



Regarding Ivan the Terrible as the root of today's Russia is not a fantasy of Baltic counterintelligence people. Only recently, Peeter read a long laudatory article about the genius Cruel - a role model in the new Russian propaganda materials. Russia increasingly uses history to justify its current actions. Under the statue, which has a White Guardsman and a Red Army soldier together, is the text: "Both fought for Russia." Peeter almost starts laughing when he talks about it.



Historically, this is an absurd coexistence, but everything is possible in Russia. Imperialism, incessant expansion and at the same time nationalism, turning everything around the Russians - even such a ridiculous combination is possible in Russia and makes any normal development impossible.



But not only Arnold Sinisalu is interested in history. Aleksander Toots knows the history of his family back 300 years and rarely gets excited when talking about it. Toots is a descendant of Baltic Germans on one grandmother's side. Mistrust between nations is no stranger to him: when his grandmother decided to marry an Estonian - a simple peasant - it caused a big conflict in the family. Toots has carefully preserved all the letters that talk about it.



But people from the Russian special services are also interested in history. "In recent years, a lot of emphasis has been placed on shaping the present through history," says Normunds Mežviets. For the Russian special services, history primarily means conflicts and wars. Through them, an image is created, for which the war is fought at all, and according to Peetri, the security people have received "a special dose of history". From there comes their desire not only to expand, but also to take revenge.



Disappointment at being left behind by the West has made them either emphasize Russia's specialness or take offense, become bitter, think that something has been taken away from Russia. "Russians are not interested in truth," says one of my Russian acquaintances, "but justice." Even if this historical justice is only a thin fantasy.



You don't have to dig too deep into colonial history to understand today's France. Russia is different. Everything here is a muted continuation of the rhythms of the past. The current Russian special services existed in a startlingly similar form centuries ago, and even the basic nature of today's propaganda has been shaped during the tsarist era. The war in Syria and Afghanistan was played out in exactly the same way already in the Northern War and during the Livonian War - now there are tanks instead of swords and cherries instead of spurs, but the desires and behavior (and maybe even some of the equipment) are still centuries old.



The brutal culture of today's Russian army has been planted there since the time of the GULAG, and it is not accidental, but systemic. Fossilized hierarchies, the inability to take into account peculiarities, the existence of sole rulers in an information bubble, and at the same time the people's longing for a sole ruler, which is perhaps the most difficult to understand in the West - all this has existed in Russia for centuries, and will continue to exist in the future.



In the special service of the Baltic countries, they don't tell me about Putin, but instead they remind me of Peeter Esime , who killed all the Russians who supported the Swedes. "Beat your own so that strangers are afraid," Arnold Sinisalu begins and Aleksander Toots concludes the Russian principle. "Violence is their historical pattern and it will not change," Sinisalu adds calmly from behind his round glasses. "Human life has no value there."



Today's Butša is not only Butša, but a repetition of Katņ. The Olenivka prison bombing is a replica of the Sambir prison explosion, where 1,200 female prisoners died 80 years earlier. Historians look at Ukraine and nothing surprises them there. Because Ukraine is not only Ukraine. This is also the Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania of the 1940s.



They are not like us



"They only recognize power," says Jauniškis. "and if you use force yourself, they can even become your friends." This is something completely different from the jacketed diplomacy or even normal negotiations that the West is used to.



"In Russia, a loss is when both sides get something," says an Estonian entrepreneur who has been making complex business deals with Russians for decades. "For them, there must always be winners and losers in negotiations." And the winners can only be them. "Diplomacy is a sign of weakness there," says Normunds Mežviets. "Russia only accepts force. It is difficult to understand this in the West, because there they know different values - and it is believed that others do too."



Darius Jauniškis compares Russian society to medieval Mongols. Lithuania once fought with the Russian princes against the Mongol hordes, but looking at the behavior of the Russian soldiers and officers, it has the feeling that they have changed sides. "They're animals," he says calmly. "I would not like to think so primitively that there are such evil people in that society," says Peeter. "I would like to believe in something nobler. But it's that simple."



Jauniškis knows that it is not correct to say this. Of course, it is not a question of some national character trait - as if all Russians were born bad. "For generations, people have been born into fairy tales where life is shit, and there has almost never been freedom of expression - so what do you expect?" says one human rights activist, who does not agree with an entire nation being deprived of a human wage. We need to talk not about Russians, but about Russian society.



We are reminded that Russia is also Chekhov and barankas, big heart and kindness, piety and Dostoyevsky . But what did Dostoevsky write? Dostoevsky writes that a Russian person can be anything only radically - either radically good or radically evil. One of his heroes once takes "a national argument from his pocket - a huge fist, ribbed, gnarled, covered with red hairs" and it is clear to everyone that when this "deeply national argument firmly hits some object, only a wet stain remains".



Arnold Sinisalu, for example, reads Lyudmila Ulitskaya with interest , watches her interviews and was even a little surprised at how passionately Ulitskaya is against the war and yet she did not leave Russia before the war. a real Russian, but instead a Jew." But what is said about the Jews in Russia? "I would give a dozen Ukrainians for one Jew," says one of Sergei Dovlatov 's characters.



Contempt for Ukraine is not Putin's fantasy. It has much deeper roots, and before an interview with a famous Russian theater director, I am warned that he is generally a liberal anti-Putinist, but after the conquest of Crimea he had found: the right step. Because Ukrainians are not people.



Darius Jauniškis repeatedly uses the expression "unique way of thinking" when talking about Russia. This is not our ecosystem. It has its own rules, its own values. Even the jokes are different. Baltic counterspies have repeatedly tried to tell Westerners Russian anecdotes and vice versa - but no one laughs because they don't understand how it can be funny. Only Baltic people laugh at both.



"It would be too easy to say that the way of thinking of Russians has become this way under the influence of propaganda," says Darius Jauniškis. "Imperialism, chauvinism, brutality - they are in their education, upbringing and culture, but also in their values. And so for centuries." Jauniškis - and no one else I talk to from the Baltic counterintelligence services - does not believe that this could change.



Nothing changes



When the Baltic states regained their independence in 1991, Russia also became more democratic for a while. It was as if there were elections, there was talk of publicity, everything seemed to be turning for the better. But only the West believed in the revolution. "We made our plans with the calculation that after a year at the latest, Russia will be back to the way it was before and the empire will return," says Raivo Vare , who was the Minister of State of Estonia at the time, who has been interested in Russia all his life and lived there for 17 years at one time. According to him, the calculation at that time was based on "life experience". "But we were too optimistic," he then adds. Only a few months passed and Russia started manipulating Estonia... with oil.



Nothing will change, all the Baltic counterintelligence people tell me. "They already say in schools in Russia that the Baltic countries have disappeared for us only temporarily," says Peeter. He puts his hands around his coffee cup and then says: " Pushkin cannot lead a country like Russia." He does not believe that things will get better even if Alexei Navalny miraculously becomes Russia's leader. "The mindset is the same," he says. "Cleaning should be total. But that won't happen." The young people have thrown their hands, the system is massive, the demonstrations are getting nowhere, all the hopes cherished by the West for a peaceful democratic change are extremely naive and ignore Russia's history, way of thinking and reality.



Estonian ambassador to Ukraine Kaimo Kuusk only recently stood on the edge of the mass graves in Izjum and went to see the torture chambers there. He was told that the torturers were not Buryats, but spoke with an elegant St. Petersburg or Moscow accent. The only thing that could change anything is Russia's defeat in the Ukrainian war. "Historically, force has always worked against Russia," says Peeter. "No matter how much one would like to find another solution - there is none."



"We currently do not see any force capable of spreading democratic values in Russia," says Darius Jauniškis. "They demand the respect of all other countries, and only through brute force." Normunds Mežviets puts his palms together and lists the main points of the strategic assessment of Latvian counterintelligence with a dispassionate expression. Russia will not conquer Ukraine. Putin's way of thinking is starting to change, but when, that cannot be said. It depends not only on him or Russia, but also on the activity of the West. Then Mezhviets takes a short break. "But Russia's mindset will not change," he says. "Even Putin's death will not change anything. Russia is always a threat to our region, and not because of its leaders."



The counterintelligence leaders of all three Baltic states perceive that the attack on Ukraine did not mean a change in Russia, but it did mean a change in the West. Now, even at the political level there, it is gradually understood that it is not possible to treat Russia in the same way as other countries - but this line is thin. There is still talk of Putin's war. That ordinary Russians should not be persecuted. We must be understanding and humanistic, otherwise we are not European.



A controversial cocktail where, in the name of Western values, we have to convince ourselves that the corpses of Ukrainians are just the work of a few crazy war fanatics, and not the result of a much broader mindset that has lasted for centuries and always gone unpunished. Many are ready to save Putin's face - and the price is the corpses of Ukrainians with a rope around their necks and their faces wiped off.



Not only Russia is based on history. " Roosevelt was naive," says Arnold Sinisalu, when he recalls how Roosevelt tried to make Stalin his ally and sacrificed the Baltic States for this. He recalls how upset they were in the United States when a Latvian film compared communists to Nazis. Western optimism about Russia has been long-standing - although it has always been unfounded. "There has been a lot of cynical self-interest in the West," says Arnold Sinisalu. "The political leadership always gave the rules of the game, that you still have to communicate with Russia somehow." When I ask how he felt about the West's attitude, Sinisalu shrugs his shoulders. "What feelings can he still create," he says. "Not positive ones, anyway."



According to him, too, things have gotten better in the West since the start of the Ukrainian war, but not enough. When someone talks about the fact that only Putin's war is going on or that Russia must not lose face, Arnold Sinisalu calls it "stupid talk". As a historian, he remembers well: Russia has always had a turnaround only when they have lost a war.



It is possible that the more accurate Russian knowledge of the security agencies of the Baltic countries will also disappear soon - the new generations have come into contact with the local Russians, but no longer with Russia, and that is something else entirely. It is not a question of nationality, but of the growing environment. The younger generations don't know Russian anymore, they don't understand the nuances, they can get lost in the details. "I'm a legacy," says Toots. Does the new generation mean naivety? "On the contrary," says Jauniškis. "They have the experience of their parents' generation."



After the outbreak of the war, Russian intelligence activities in the Baltic countries have weakened a bit, but everyone believes that only temporarily. "My work for the last 15 years has been relatively routine," says spy hunter Aleksander Toots calmly and calls catching enemy spies "line work" and his work "a way of life". According to him, there have been no major changes. The only surprises are tactical.



When we talk in the early summer of 2021, he talks about Russian influence in schools or some transit businessmen who would like better relations with the colossal empire. A year later, of course, everything is different, the opponent's tools have changed, but here too you can be ready. "If you go in expecting them to be the same as us, you'll be disappointed," smiles Toots.



He once served in the missile division of the Russian army in Ukraine and once had to build a large asphalt site in two days. They had no gravel, no asphalt, no machinery. There was also no vodka with which all this could have been bought from the locals. However, the site was ready after two days. The tea roll was stolen and everything else was carried from God knows where. "You have to be creative," says Toots.



When the war in Ukraine broke out, he was looking at Soviet propaganda posters from World War II one weekend and got an idea. He called some colleagues, things were quickly discussed and already on Sunday evening they started sending files to the printing house. After a few days, posters were hung at Estonian border points, warning of recruitment attempts by the Russian special services and inviting them to report them. How successful was this campaign? "I have a selective memory," Toots chuckles, but admits that the number of converts was staggering.



One of our appointments with Toots is postponed for weeks. "There is no Tootsi," say the spokesmen of the Defense Police. "He has fast times in Narva," adds Arnold Sinisalu shortly. This is to be expected. During the removal of the Narva tank, Toots was guarding Ida-Virumaa - in his home area, among Estonians and Russians. When Toots gets back from Narva, he is not very excited. Everything went according to plan, but that doesn't mean it was easy. The Russian intelligence services were not very active. But in order to avoid riots, it was necessary to do what was the only thing that worked - to bring possible "necessary persons" to the plate by half force.



It is possible that Toots played Russian music when he got home from Narva. He listens to it often and would be happy to talk about Kino or Aquarium with his colleagues, but among them are historians rather than music lovers. We meet three times in total, and Toots talks a lot about Russia, but hardly about himself. "These may be my last interviews ever," he says. Over the past dozen years, the unit led by Toots has captured and brought to justice 21 Russian spies, all of whom have been convicted. I wonder if Alexander Toots means catching another spy when he says at the end of the conversation, “Wait. There will be news before the end of the year."



Lithuania's counterintelligence will not allow anything like that, but Vilnius, surrounded by Ukrainian flags, shows no signs of fatigue. A few weeks after the war broke out, Darius Jauniškis' father said how he never thought he would see another war in his life. "One day the Russians will wake up and realize what they have done," believes Jauniškis. "And their guilt is very painful."



When I leave the head office of the VDD in Latvia and the pens confiscated at the pass are returned to me, I ask the security guard if he has faster times than usual. He nods but doesn't say a word.



I am going back to Estonia. A few days later, great-aunt's birthday will take place. He will be a hundred years old and, according to his children, he is in good shape, his mind is sharp, and only a few years ago he climbed the roof himself to teach chimney sweeps. Only after February 24, he had to sleep restlessly. I read the news about Russia's invasion of Ukraine and I couldn't sleep anymore.



“She's scared,” her children tell me. "She is afraid that the rapists will come again."
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I read all of that. Very insightful. I do think there is a contrast between Russian military and the attitude of some of today's Russian youth, which is highlighted in youtube surveys of Russians. Most Russians seem scared of the state

BTW I think there is a mistake in the translation in the second to last paragraph, using 'he' instead of 'she'
 
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