Trying to gauge Russian ambitions? Look how nervous its Nordic neighbors are
The eyes of the world are on the Russian-Ukrainian border as Putin threatens an invasion. However, the more vital stage of the Kremlin’s military ambitions is the Baltic Sea, where the likes of bordering countries like Finland and Sweden are mobilizing troops as Moscow tries to undermine the allegiance of the EU and former Soviet states.
While tensions between the U.S and Russia mount with the Kremlin gathering troops at the border of Ukraine, countries farther north are preparing for the worst.
In Sweden, Dagens Nyheter reports that the country of 10 million people deployed armored vehicles and 100 soldiers to patrol streets on the island of Gotland on Friday in response to Russian landing ships sailing into the Baltic Sea. Even if the Swedish Armed Forces announced soon after that the ships were leaving, serious questions about Russia's military ambitions remain.
Russian presence in the regional waters is not uncommon, but it was the increase from one to six Russian landing ships over a three-week period that prompted Sweden’s move to beef up military presence in the eastern archipelago. According to Swedish Minister of Defense Peter Hultqvist, the move was meant to “demonstrate that we are not naive and that Sweden will not be caught off guard should something happen.”
While the Russian muscle-flexing has made headlines in the Nordic press, it has garnered scarce attention internationally as all eyes have been turned to the 100,000 Russian soldiers amassing near the Ukrainian border.
And yet, the main stage of Russia’s military ambitions — to create a multipolar world in which NATO is unable to dictate terms — is not Ukraine, but the Baltic Sea.
Throughout the Cold War, the Baltic Sea region was essentially a military no-man’s land on the periphery of the main axis of confrontation in central Europe. It was that geo-strategic inconsequence that allowed for a Nordic Balance to emerge, formed by neutral Finland and Sweden as well as special status NATO-members Norway and Denmark — neither country allowed nuclear weapons or foreign troops to be permanently stationed on their territory.
But following the collapse of the Soviet empire in 1991, the sea that separates Russia from the West has rather become a microcosm of pan-European relations — bringing together some of the world’s most developed countries and those still struggling to recover from Communist rule.
It is that unity that Putin seeks to undermine. By becoming the dominant power in Eurasia, the Kremlin seeks to exert influence over its neighbors and to bargain with the world's top countries on equal footing. That’s especially true with regards to the three Baltic countries — Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, whose independence and active role in NATO and the EU are seen as threats to Russia’s security and autonomy.
And so today, as an increasingly pressured Sweden and Finland sit between the Baltic states and the West, the question is what road the northern neighbors will take should Russia’s saber-rattling turn into open conflict. After all, as Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are isolated from fully fledged NATO members, it would be problematic for the alliance to respond to an incident in the Baltic region without the acquiescence of Finland and Sweden.
So far, the two countries have managed to walk a line of deepening cooperation with NATO without formally joining the alliance — thus avoiding overly aggravating Moscow. However, as Putin has now demanded written commitments that NATO will never again enlarge, the balance could be at risk.
While Russia’s foreign ministry recently stated that Finland and Sweden joining Nato “would have serious military and political consequences," Finland’s Prime Minister Sanna Marin has answered that the country reserves the option of seeking NATO membership at any time:
“Let it be stated once again: Finland’s room to maneuver and freedom of choice also includes the possibility of military alignment and of applying for NATO membership, should we ourselves so decide,” Niinisto said.
Sweden too responded, with the country’s supreme military commander Micael Bydén saying that acceding to Russian demands would mean the end of the country’s security strategy, Dagens Nyheter reports.
Russia’s attempt to shut the door on the countries’ freedom of choice also went down badly with the domestic population: In Finland, a number of Green Party politicians have expressed support for alliance membership, joining the long-standing pro-NATO wing within the center-right party; while in Sweden, an opinion poll published by broadcaster TV4 on Monday shows that 35% of Swedes are now in favor of NATO membership, while 31% are undecided and 33% against. That represents a big leap from 2018, where the same poll showed that 48% were against joining the alliance.
Should the pro-NATO voices become a majority, it will put both governments in an awkward position between responding to the demands of the people while realizing that such a move could potentially trigger large-scale global conflict. Meanwhile, it’s a fact that Finland and Sweden would lack commensurate answers to an eastern attack. Sweden has bolstered its defenses following Russia’s annexation of Crimea and even reintroduced mandatory military service in 2017. Still, the country’s 25,000 military personnel — roughly equal to that of Finland — is a far cry from its peak capabilities during the Cold War in the mid-1960s, when Swedish troops numbered some 800,000. As such, while Finland and Sweden are wise to prepare for the worst, what they — and indeed the world — should hope for is that diplomacy can once again find a pathway to a peaceful de-escalation.
— Carl-Johan Karlsson
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• Blinken arrives in Ukraine amid Russia invasion fears: The U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Kyiv to reaffirm U.S. support for President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, before heading to Berlin on Thursday and Geneva on Friday, in a whistle-stop diplomatic effort to defuse escalating tensions amid mounting fears that a Russian invasion of Ukraine could be imminent.
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Saturnino de la Fuente García from León, Spain has died, three weeks before turning 113.
Slovak daily Dennik devotes its front page to the 73,201 deaths Slovakia registered in 2021, a post-War record death toll for the country of 5.4 million. An estimated 20,000 of the deaths are attributed to the coronavirus pandemic.
Germany's legendary clubbing culture crashes museum space
The exhibition “Electro” in Düsseldorf is an unlikely tribute to a joyful and uninhibited club culture, with curators forced to contend with limits of a museum setting ... and another COVID lockdown, reports Boris Pofalla in German daily Die Welt.
🕺❌ It is surely a coincidence that the first comprehensive exhibition charting the 100-year history of electronic music in Germany opened in the same week that night clubs across the country were forced to close. It wasn’t planned that way, but it’s like opening an exhibition about the cultural history of alcohol the day after the introduction of prohibition. Since the start of the pandemic, wild parties have been a rarity, drinking has been done behind closed doors and spontaneity has been consigned to the history books.
🎹 Are we witnessing the end of uninhibited nightlife? How long can clubs survive under such extreme pressure? Was everything better in the past? And what exactly do we mean by “everything?" The exhibition “Electro — from Kraftwerk to Techno” at the Museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf traces the history of a cultural phenomenon that has had a significant impact on our society. It looks back to the 1920s, to the invention of the electronic Croix Sonore, the ethereophone and the theremin and through the 1930s and the invention of the Trautonium, an early version of a synthesizer.
🎶 The curators have installed scaffolding inside the museum’s blocky architecture. Within the square spaces created, 500 exhibits are presented against a black background with low lighting, synthesizers, photographs, record sleeves, illustrations, artworks, videos and interactive installations. And then there is the constant background noise. Star DJ Laurent Garnier has put together multiple playlists that allow visitors to travel through the major techno cities of the world.
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$68.7 billion
Microsoft announced a landmark $68.7 billion deal to buy U.S. gaming giant Activision Blizzard, which will make the tech corporation the third-largest gaming company by revenue, behind Tencent and Sony. Activision Blizzard, the maker of Candy Crush and Call of Duty, has been hit by a state lawsuit alleging it enabled toxic workplace conditions and sexual harassment against women employees last year.
Italy's high court: Loud toilet flush is violation of human rights
An Italian couple has won a two-decade-long court battle that invoked an international treaty signed after World War II in order to prove the acceptable volume of a toilet flush.
The ordeal started as a typical neighborhood quarrel, yet spanned nearly two decades and eventually made its way up to Italy's Highest Court this week, Rome daily La Repubblica reports.
It all began in 2003, when four brothers built a new toilet in their apartment located in the La Spezia province of northwest Italy. The husband and wife living next door soon complained that the toilet was used frequently during the night, and the flush was so loud it woke them up each time.
The couple took their case to court, demanding a resolution of the noise problem and the payment of damages; but the trial judge rejected their case.
The couple decided to take their case to the appeals court of Genoa, triggering an inspection of the two flats that ultimately found in their favor. Investigators reported that they'd discovered "a significant excess of three decibels over the standards required by legislation." Translation: that flush was too damn loud.
The four brothers were required to change the WC flush location in the flat, and to pay 500 euros per year, beginning from the toilet's installation in 2003.
The four brothers ultimately decided to bring “the flush case” to the Court of Cassation, the highest court of appeal in Italy.
But finally the high court ruled in favor of the couple, considering the impact the flush had on their quality of life as an infringement of a right "to respect one's own private and family life," constitutionally guaranteed protected by Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).
Wash your hands. Turn out the lights. After 19 years of battle, the fate of the four brothers was sealed and the war of the flush silenced forever.
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“Nobody told me.”
— During a visit to a hospital in north London, embattled British Prime Minister Boris Johnson denied knowing that a “bring your own booze” party at 10 Downing Street, was in breach of COVID-19 rules. “Nobody said this was something that was against the rules, doing something that wasn't a work event, because frankly, I can't imagine why it would have gone ahead, or it would have been allowed to go ahead if it was against the rules." It’s not clear if such pleas of ignorance by the head of government will help Johnson hold onto his job amid growing calls for his resignation over his breaching UK’s lockdown rules.
A Yemeni man stands in the rubble of a building damaged by a Saudi-led air strike in the capital of Sanaa. This followed a deadly attack from the Iran-aligned Houthi rebel group in the United Arab Emirates — Photo: Hani Al-Ansi/dpa/ZUMA
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