There’s certainly some amount of propaganda effort being put in it on EU level into elevating the threat.
1. There are actors who would benefit from arms race. The money, the military careers etc. The whole NATO nearly became irrelevant before Russia started invading. Now all those generals have jobs again and Rheinmetall shares are going up.
2. There are actors for whom threat from the East is existential factor (it’s in the core of the political platform of nationalists in Baltic states - remove it and they are suddenly less competitive compared to neutral or pro-Russian parties). Current chief of EU diplomacy Kallas belongs to this group.
However I think Russia wants to make a point too. It’s hardly planning any war with NATO (I hope their intelligence isn’t as bad as in Ukraine), but they do need to convince European voters that war is possible if peace in Ukraine won’t come anytime soon (on their terms). And European voters are certainly not in the mood for big war, so the question really is, who is more convincing: von der Leyen & Co with their idea to support Ukraine until it wins, or Russia with it’s idea that further escalation may harm EU citizens directly.
I'll take the bait and answer. There are indeed actors for whom the threat from the East is AN existential factor. That's because they remember how the life under Soviet rule looked like and they don't want to repeat it.
Whether there's a mood for a big war, I am not sure. But there are states that are ready for it. And yes, it is within EU interests to let the fighting happen in Ukraine rather than EU.
Also, it's a nice collection of the subtler Russian points you have here, B+ for effort.
>That's because they remember how the life under Soviet rule looked like
Just as a reminder: Latvian Riflemen helped to create it by supporting Lenin in the crucial phase of revolution and suppressing anti-Bolshevik rebellion in Moscow. Baltic republics were well-represented in party structures and in Soviet elites. So this “oh, it was so terrible in Soviet Union” projection on Russia is a very specific nationalist narrative ignoring shared history of both nations, which included shared suffering from the same regimes and shared participation in oppression.
> Baltic republics were well-represented in party structures and in Soviet elites.
Name one Lithuanian or Estonian member of the Politburo in the half-century spanning 1940 to 1990. I'll save you time: there were none.
Your knee-jerk reaction of trying to shift blame onto historical oddities like the Latvian Riflemen reminds me of neo-nazis pointing out that the Wehrmacht had some 150 000 Jews in its ranks, "proving" that Germans weren't all that antisemitic and that the Holocaust has been exaggerated. Same impulse.
1. There are actors who would benefit from arms race. The money, the military careers etc. The whole NATO nearly became irrelevant before Russia started invading. Now all those generals have jobs again and Rheinmetall shares are going up.
2. There are actors for whom threat from the East is existential factor (it’s in the core of the political platform of nationalists in Baltic states - remove it and they are suddenly less competitive compared to neutral or pro-Russian parties). Current chief of EU diplomacy Kallas belongs to this group.
However I think Russia wants to make a point too. It’s hardly planning any war with NATO (I hope their intelligence isn’t as bad as in Ukraine), but they do need to convince European voters that war is possible if peace in Ukraine won’t come anytime soon (on their terms). And European voters are certainly not in the mood for big war, so the question really is, who is more convincing: von der Leyen & Co with their idea to support Ukraine until it wins, or Russia with it’s idea that further escalation may harm EU citizens directly.