Putin Ally Predicts Baltic States Will Fall to Russia in 15 Minutes of War
Dec 03, 2023 at 1:45 PM EST
By Thomas Kika
Weekend Staff Writer
A Russian media pundit and an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested during a recent TV appearance that the Baltic states would fall to Moscow in 15 minutes in a hypothetical future conflict.
On Saturday, Julia Davis, founder of the watchdog group, Russian Media Monitor, shared a clip to X, the platform previously known as Twitter, from a program hosted by prominent Russian propagandist Vladimir Solovyov, in which he and a panel of guests celebrated the supposed expansion of the country's "empire."
"State TV pundits on Vladimir Solovyov's show rejoiced that the Russian empire is expanding and expressed their amazement at the 'stupid' Westerners who still can't figure out modern Russia, which has been 'kicking their ass for centuries,'" Davis wrote in a post describing the clip.
Among the panel of guests was Stanislav Krapivnik, a Russian-American military affairs analyst who previously served in the U.S. Army before defecting to Russia in the '90s. At one point, Krapivnik suggested that the Baltic states—the former Soviet Union territories of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—would be the next target of Russia and that they would fall in short order.
"We want the world. Preferably, all of it," Krapivnik said, as translated by Russian Media Monitor. "And that's where we're going. Right now, the Russian empire is growing back. We're coming back. The Baltics will be next. They say, they're ready for a war with Russia. How long will that take? About 15 minutes."
The three nations that comprise the Baltic states joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization ( NATO) in March 2004, and have since become major focal points for the alliance's attempts to maintain strength against potential aggression from Russia. Throughout the Russian invasion of Ukraine that began in February 2022, the states have worked to bolster their defenses, as Russian leaders have intimated a desire to retake more Soviet-era territories.
Newsweek reached out to defense experts via email for comment. |
