Yahoo News has obtained confidential strategy documents drawn up by the Kremlin that reveal Russia's ambitious plans to exert its influence in the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
Despite its benign name, the Directorate for Cross-Border Cooperation is staffed by Russian intelligence officers from the three main spy services, the FSB, SVR and GRU, respectively representing the domestic, foreign and military agencies. The directorate’s real agenda is bringing nations back into Russia’s sphere of influence.
Each country in the latest Kremlin documents is addressed in two separate texts. The first lists the “strategic interests of the Russian Federation” in different areas and at different periods. The second text outlines the risks that lie in Russia’s path. Though each Baltic nation is distinct, there are commonalities in Russia’s proposed approaches to all three. In the stated “humanitarian sphere,” the promotion of Russian culture and the preservation of Russian-language education are paramount.
To counter such efforts, Russia’s Estonia strategy directly calls for the “propaganda of Russian culture,” including the cultivation of children and the training of “talented Russian-speaking youth” in Russian universities. Another explicit aim of the Russian documents is to prevent “the establishment of NATO military bases” in Latvia and Lithuania. National air and army installations in the Baltic countries host troops and units from NATO allies on a rotating basis.
In a symbol of how these three small countries, numerically outmatched by Russia’s military, have adapted to inhabiting a hostile piece of geography, Estonia has since grown into a cybersecurity powerhouse, including in eastern Ukraine. Its foreign intelligence service, Välisluureamet, is considered to be one of the premier collectors of signals intelligence, or communications intercepts, in NATO.
“They want to increase exports to Estonia by 2022,” Toots said, “but last summer Russia itself decided to close the Narva-Ivangorod bridge to trucks in retaliation for Estonia’s support for Ukraine,” referring to the border crossing in Estonia’s northeast. “How can you increase exports if you close the main channel?”
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