Journal on Baltic Security

The article examines the debates surrounding the status and role of Russian Émigrés. The full-scale invasion launched by Russia against Ukraine on 24 February 2022 came as a shock to many, including many segments of the Russian population, but the outflux of individuals opposing Putin has been present from the 2014. That said, the invasion transformed this trickle into an outright deluge whereby estimated 700,000 up to 1,200,000 people left Russia. The article gives the historical context, describing the policies towards diaspora communities of the countries in conflict during and after WWII. Then will engage with the dilemmas surrounding the decision either to admit Russian Émigrés or close the doors on them. Current and future policies towards Russian Émigrés are considered with recommendation to continue giving preference to individual approach in assessing each case.

Based on representative primary sources as well as authoritative academic and think tank analyses, this article aims to evaluate the role that Asia’s emerging superpower came to play in the Baltic trio’s security, with particular emphasis on its harder aspects and most recent developments, which marked a certain shift in the respective bilateral relationships. Structured according to the conventional levels of international relations analysis and rough chronological order, the qualitative study tracks the more or less direct impact of China for the comprehensive security of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania ranging from the systemic (global) to purely bilateral domains. The results show that China has indeed become a security factor to be reckoned with there, particularly since roughly 2017–2019 and primarily due to its deepening strategic partnership with Russia. Some of its security effects, however, are even older, more nuanced, yet still significant. Since roughly 2019, however, China’s security factor has increasingly acquired challenging and even threatening characteristics as is most clearly demonstrated by its relationship dynamics with Lithuania.

The current study discusses differences between Russia and the Baltic States in terms of their strategic narratives, as well as how they interpret key terms and concepts in the field of security. To frame the scope of the study, the strategic narrative of Russia for the Baltic countries and the Baltic strategic narrative(s) for Russia are compared and analysed. Both sides are also locked within the bigger framework of European Union’s economic sanctions against Russia and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance’s deterrence concept. On the other hand, the Baltic States and Russia have a lot to gain from possible improvements in economic relations and reduction of regional security tensions.

Should the U.S. respond with military means to a limited Russian incursion in the Baltics? This paper explores Western attitudes towards such a hypothetical grey zone crisis. Using survey experiments and crisis simulations we find considerable reluctance to use military tools in order to support a Baltic ally, and surprisingly little variation across the audiences. The underlying reluctance to get the U.S. involved in an armed conflict with Russia in the hopes that such acquiescence may help preserve global stability indicates that the conflict in Ukraine only had a fundamentally limited impact on Western strategic thought on deterring Russia.

The article proposes the analytical review on what