The Baltic countries, which were Soviet territory until 1991, are the strongest voices for deterrence and harsh sanctions
THE MUNICIPAL government’s offices in the Estonian city of Narva are just a snowball’s throw from Russia. From her window Katri Raik, the mayor, can watch cars and lorries trickling through a border checkpoint. More than 80% of Narva’s residents are ethnic Russians, a legacy of the centuries during which Narva was part first of the Russian Empire and then of the Soviet Union.
Last summer, when Mr Putin wrote an essay claiming that Ukraine was not a legitimate historical nation, it rang alarm bells in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, because he had made similar arguments about them in the mid-2000s. Defence planners in these countries consider Russia an existential threat. “If Putin invades Ukraine, we’re next,” says a senior government official in one Baltic country.
It is in central Europe that attitudes towards Russia are most ambivalent. Viktor Orban, Hungary’s populist prime minister, is friendly with Mr Putin and is due to visit him in Moscow on February 1st. He has imitated Mr Putin’s model of government by taking control, in effect, of his country’s media and judiciary and styling himself as the guardian of Christian Europe . He has bought Russian nuclear power plants and struck deals for Russian gas that circumvent Ukraine.
Poland’s government, too, has some affinity with Mr Putin’s. It is conservative, religious and nationalist, and is fighting with the EU over its efforts to turn judges into political pawns. Yet it is the most fiercely anti-Russian government in Europe. Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the head of the ruling party, lost his brother, then president, in a plane crash in 2010 which he believes was caused by Russia.
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