Baltic Dilemmas

In a follow-up article on the preparations for the gigantic propaganda festival that is to be held in Moscow this May, the Jamestown Foundation reports that Latvia's President, Vaira Vike-Freiberga, has yielded to political pressure and has agreed to attend the VE-Day 60th anniversary "summit". Her decision is a temporary blow to Baltic solidarity, as the leaders of Estonia and Lithuania have yet to make up their minds on the issue of attendance, and a united front would have been useful. However, the deed is done:

In Latvia, leaders of all the four right-leaning parties in the coalition government expressed support in varying degrees for Vike-Freiberga's decision. They made clear that the dilemma had been a painful one for them and the country. Leaders of the three Russian parties in parliament expressed full and smug satisfaction. They have no intention to relax Moscow-encouraged pressure for legislative changes that would, in effect, turn Latvia into a bi-national country. Some Latvian politicians hope that attendance at the Moscow summit, to be followed by Latvia's ratification of the Framework Convention on the Protection of National Minorities (a document designed for pre-1991 Western Europe) could induce Russia to step back from the more radical demands on this score.

See also, in this blog: The Old and the New and An Extraordinary Man