It's the Russian version of flipping the board over.
Really, it's not fair to say Russia annexed Crimea, the decision was Vladimir Putin's. And it was part of a growing pattern. In 2008, Russia invaded Georgia (the nation, not the home of America's second best barbecue) under the justification that they'd been aggressive toward two breakaway "republics" within Georgia, both of whom were heavily backed by Putin's government. Hendrik isn't crazy to think it could happen to his country next ...
"I'm more than sure that nobody in the west believed that in a 21st century Europe, something like what's happening in Ukraine right now would go down." He thought it would be difficult for Putin's government to "orchestrate" a Ukrainian-style civil war in Estonia because, "We are in the EU and NATO, and the NATO units that are in Estonia give us a good amount of security."
Uh, about that ...
Hendrik now feels that, "If the EU keeps cracking like it started to with Brexit, and if Trump with that walking snotball of a man Newt Gingrich stay on the opinion that Estonia might not be worth defending, then that might give Russian leaders confidence to maybe go through with something more drastic."
The Soviet Union first ate Estonia in 1939, as part of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. But Estonia regained its independence in 1991. According to one school of thought, Vladimir Putin's main life goal is to reunite the severed nations of the USSR. And last October, a Russian warplane violated Estonia's airspace ... for the fourth time.
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