Lithuania’s ill advised collusion with the Zhou regime to harass Russia by attempting to enforce sanctions on certain shipments between the main body of the Russian Federation and the RF’s Kaliningrad Oblast raises a number of historical issues—which also involve matters of international law. Perhaps a bit of background will be useful to readers.
My wife is a Lithuanian from Klaipeda (Memel). I have visited that city for two-week vacations about a dozen times. My wife is an old friend of the city's mayor, and so I have visited with him in his government office.
I don't speak much Lithuanian, but I do speak Russian, so I can talk with most people in Lithuania. Most of the older generation speaks Russian well, and most of the younger generation speaks English well.
The population of Klaipeda is roughly half Lithuanian and half Russian. In general, the Lithuanians speak Russian well. Most of the Russians speak Lithuanian at least adequately. If the Russians attended a Russian-language school, then they had to study Lithuanian as a foreign language.
There are many Lithuanian-Russian marriages. The children grow up speaking both languages.
In general, the Lithuanians and Russians get along with each other well.
The economy seems to be doing well. During most of my visits I was impressed by the much construction that was being done.
Many young people go abroad to live and work for a while. They can live and work legally anywhere in the European Union. We will see how many of them eventually return to Lithuania to live and work.
Listening to Mercouris yesterday. He quoted one of the top officials from the outgoing Estonian (government has collapsed) saying that they were told be NATO that if Russia invaded it would take about 120 days before NATO could launch an effort to recapture their country. Reading between the lines, that means something like "never." Mercouris said, look, I'm a Greek, from a small country, and we have to watch our step with regard to bigger nations around us. I can't imagine what people from Baltic countries thought they were going to get from NATO membership, especially since there was no reason to believe Russia had any hostile intentions toward those small countries.As Mercouris said, America is a major power but it's far away. Russia is a major power on their doorstep. They need to be looking for real world solutions to getting along with Russia, because the US isn't going to get into WW3 for them. I strongly suspect that their elites have been bought off by Davos/US to serve as proxies/pawns in a Neocon NWO feud with Russia. They will gain nothing.
Everything the US does will be completely justified by Russia's invasion of Ukraine--up to and including the launching of a world-as-we-know-it-ending nuclear war. For the last 60 years this country has had an infestation of termites. 'Suddenly' we look around and everything from the foundation to the roof is rotten and weakened beyond simple repair. There are only two ways this all ends and neither one involves the Supreme Court or ballot box.
I worked in Lithuanian in 1991 and remember the horror stories from my students about the mass executions and deportations by the Soviets in 1940. The shadow of the Holocaust also hung heavily over the whole place. I therefore understand the distrust the Lithuanians have for Russia. However, the second author you cite is right: the blockade has nothing to do with the Liths, but with their American puppetmasters. The Neocons MUST have their war!
I recall a visit to my sixth grade class at John Ireland Elementary School in Dallas by a gentleman who escaped from Lithuania, his first hand descriptions of the horrors of the Soviet occupation made quite an impression on my 10 yr. old mind.
Let me be clear. I agree with your comment. I am in no way defending the suppression of the national aspirations of the Baltic nations. Russian attitudes were colored by Lithuanian and Latvian collaboration with the Nazis (as also the Western Ukrainians). The Soviet Union is fairly described as an Evil Empire.
"The second Soviet occupation was accompanied by the guerrilla warfare of the Lithuanian population, which took place in 1944–1953. It sought to restore an independent state of Lithuania, to consolidate democracy by destroying communism in the country, returning national values and the freedom of religion. About 50,000 Lithuanians took to the forests and fought Soviet occupants with a gun in their hands. ... Despite the fact that the guerrilla warfare did not achieve its goal of liberating Lithuania and that it resulted in more than 20,000 deaths, the armed resistance de facto demonstrated that Lithuania did not voluntarily join the USSR and it also legitimized the will of the people of Lithuania to be independent."
However, the experience described above would seem to me to be a warning for more circumspection in dealing with Russia, rather than allowing Lithuania to be a proxy for Neocon provocations.
4. Revoke recognition of the lands it got under USSR (including its capital Vilnius (Vilnya) are no longer Lithuanian either, and claim they are now part of Russia.
Thank you Mark for the brief histories you provide for the various Polish, Lithuanian, and other regions of that area. What a complicated inter-tangled mess. I myself never realized how ever changing and unsettled that region was. My mom is of Polish/Lithuanian descent with grandparents that came from that area. I met my great grandfather as a kid and I still remember his lack of English speaking ability. I’ve always sort of “self-identified” as half Irish, and quarter Polish and quarter Lithuanian. A consequence of a “mixed” marriage created in the Chicago of the 1960’s. But in fact I was raised and consider myself American with my family history a fragmented artifact of who I am, and all of that other stuff “over there.” Interesting stuff.
Probably for the same reasons that the Texas / ERCOT's interconnects did next to nothing in Feb. 2021, a lack of surplus power and/or the low capacity of an interconnect between two asynchronous grids.
Pete, maybe you haven't noticed, but the actions of almost every western nations' leaders are destroying their countries. The only question is whether they are doing it out of sheer stupidity or on purpose.
My wife is a Lithuanian from Klaipeda (Memel). I have visited that city for two-week vacations about a dozen times. My wife is an old friend of the city's mayor, and so I have visited with him in his government office.
I don't speak much Lithuanian, but I do speak Russian, so I can talk with most people in Lithuania. Most of the older generation speaks Russian well, and most of the younger generation speaks English well.
The population of Klaipeda is roughly half Lithuanian and half Russian. In general, the Lithuanians speak Russian well. Most of the Russians speak Lithuanian at least adequately. If the Russians attended a Russian-language school, then they had to study Lithuanian as a foreign language.
There are many Lithuanian-Russian marriages. The children grow up speaking both languages.
In general, the Lithuanians and Russians get along with each other well.
The economy seems to be doing well. During most of my visits I was impressed by the much construction that was being done.
Many young people go abroad to live and work for a while. They can live and work legally anywhere in the European Union. We will see how many of them eventually return to Lithuania to live and work.
Listening to Mercouris yesterday. He quoted one of the top officials from the outgoing Estonian (government has collapsed) saying that they were told be NATO that if Russia invaded it would take about 120 days before NATO could launch an effort to recapture their country. Reading between the lines, that means something like "never." Mercouris said, look, I'm a Greek, from a small country, and we have to watch our step with regard to bigger nations around us. I can't imagine what people from Baltic countries thought they were going to get from NATO membership, especially since there was no reason to believe Russia had any hostile intentions toward those small countries.As Mercouris said, America is a major power but it's far away. Russia is a major power on their doorstep. They need to be looking for real world solutions to getting along with Russia, because the US isn't going to get into WW3 for them. I strongly suspect that their elites have been bought off by Davos/US to serve as proxies/pawns in a Neocon NWO feud with Russia. They will gain nothing.
Everything the US does will be completely justified by Russia's invasion of Ukraine--up to and including the launching of a world-as-we-know-it-ending nuclear war. For the last 60 years this country has had an infestation of termites. 'Suddenly' we look around and everything from the foundation to the roof is rotten and weakened beyond simple repair. There are only two ways this all ends and neither one involves the Supreme Court or ballot box.
The neocons have been dying for years to see if the nukes actually work
I worked in Lithuanian in 1991 and remember the horror stories from my students about the mass executions and deportations by the Soviets in 1940. The shadow of the Holocaust also hung heavily over the whole place. I therefore understand the distrust the Lithuanians have for Russia. However, the second author you cite is right: the blockade has nothing to do with the Liths, but with their American puppetmasters. The Neocons MUST have their war!
I recall a visit to my sixth grade class at John Ireland Elementary School in Dallas by a gentleman who escaped from Lithuania, his first hand descriptions of the horrors of the Soviet occupation made quite an impression on my 10 yr. old mind.
Let me be clear. I agree with your comment. I am in no way defending the suppression of the national aspirations of the Baltic nations. Russian attitudes were colored by Lithuanian and Latvian collaboration with the Nazis (as also the Western Ukrainians). The Soviet Union is fairly described as an Evil Empire.
"The second Soviet occupation was accompanied by the guerrilla warfare of the Lithuanian population, which took place in 1944–1953. It sought to restore an independent state of Lithuania, to consolidate democracy by destroying communism in the country, returning national values and the freedom of religion. About 50,000 Lithuanians took to the forests and fought Soviet occupants with a gun in their hands. ... Despite the fact that the guerrilla warfare did not achieve its goal of liberating Lithuania and that it resulted in more than 20,000 deaths, the armed resistance de facto demonstrated that Lithuania did not voluntarily join the USSR and it also legitimized the will of the people of Lithuania to be independent."
However, the experience described above would seem to me to be a warning for more circumspection in dealing with Russia, rather than allowing Lithuania to be a proxy for Neocon provocations.
Russian Options:
1. Establish a land bridge
2. Cut off Gas
3. File an International Court
4. Revoke recognition of the lands it got under USSR (including its capital Vilnius (Vilnya) are no longer Lithuanian either, and claim they are now part of Russia.
Thank you Mark for the brief histories you provide for the various Polish, Lithuanian, and other regions of that area. What a complicated inter-tangled mess. I myself never realized how ever changing and unsettled that region was. My mom is of Polish/Lithuanian descent with grandparents that came from that area. I met my great grandfather as a kid and I still remember his lack of English speaking ability. I’ve always sort of “self-identified” as half Irish, and quarter Polish and quarter Lithuanian. A consequence of a “mixed” marriage created in the Chicago of the 1960’s. But in fact I was raised and consider myself American with my family history a fragmented artifact of who I am, and all of that other stuff “over there.” Interesting stuff.
They say that they have an emergency hookup to the EU grid through Poland. One wonders why they haven't used that already.
Probably for the same reasons that the Texas / ERCOT's interconnects did next to nothing in Feb. 2021, a lack of surplus power and/or the low capacity of an interconnect between two asynchronous grids.
Pete, maybe you haven't noticed, but the actions of almost every western nations' leaders are destroying their countries. The only question is whether they are doing it out of sheer stupidity or on purpose.