We must listen to the Baltic States. The Russian hybrid threat is growing
Rutte's stark warning aimed to snap European countries out of their state of complacency but received a mixed reception on the continent. As Russia helplessly watched the destruction of some of its most-prized strategic bombers and struggles to gain a decisive offensive advantage in eastern Ukraine, Rutte's framing seemed hyperbolic to many in Western Europe.
For the Baltic States, however, Rutte's rhetoric was not nearly strident enough. Due to his past support for the Nord Stream-2 gas pipeline and sluggish approach to increasing defence spending as Dutch Prime Minister, Rutte was already an unpopular figure in the Baltic States. Rutte's latest comments reawakened those critiques as they depicted Russia as a long-term danger rather than an urgent threat to Nato's security.
The Baltic States have compelling reasons to be frustrated with Rutte's incrementalism. By illegally transiting its shadow fleet of oil tankers through the Baltic Sea, weaponising migration across land borders and carrying out disruptive cyberattacks, Russia has demonstrated that it is on a war footing with the Baltic States. By dismissing these aggressive actions as mere hybrid threats, Nato risks trivialising an existential threat to the cogency of its alliance.
The mood of frustration in the Baltic States is especially pronounced because of the long build-up to Russia's current escalations against them. When I spoke to senior Estonian officials last month, they argued that Russia never truly viewed the Baltic States as sovereign after they restored their independence in 1991.
As Estonia pushed for Nato membership during the 1990s, Russian ultranationalists began issuing apocalyptic threats. After earning a plurality of votes in the 1993 legislative elections, LDPR leader and ultranationalist firebrand Vladimir Zhirinovsky warned Estonians to flee to Sweden on fishing boats and threatened to deport the Estonians who stayed home to Siberia.
But instead of being recognised for presciently warning about the Russian threat, the Baltic States were all-too-often accused of crying wolf.
Even after Russia displayed its true hand by illegally annexing Crimea in 2014 and launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Baltic States still struggled to get their message heard. In response to tightening sanctions against Belarus, President Alexander Lukashenko warned in May 2021 that he would allow drugs and migrants to flood into European Union (EU) territory. Lukashenko's threats came to pass as illegal migrants overwhelmed Latvia and Lithuania's border defences in the autumn of 2021. Despite the scale of this threat, the EU refused to finance the construction of a border wall on Lithuania's frontiers.
In response to the unresponsiveness of key Nato countries to their concerns, the Baltic States have taken matters into their own hands. From announcing 5 per cent of GDP defence spending targets to Lithuania's investment of $1.2 billion in border security with Belarus and Russia, three of Nato's smallest member states are setting a positive example for the rest of the alliance.
These states are also trying to steer Nato towards committing to a firmer response to security threats that fall below the threshold of conventional war. Their argument is that Russia's hybrid threats are steps on an escalation ladder that could lead to full-scale war. Lithuanian officials justified this contention by arguing that shadow-fleet ships could escalate from cutting undersea cables to destroying liquefied natural gas terminals and use disruptive GPS jamming to down civilian aeroplanes. Based on its track record, Russia would maintain a level of deniability around these aggressive actions and any Baltic retaliation could lead to an invasion.
As Nato's Article 5 security guarantees do not clearly extend to hybrid threats, former Estonian president Toomas Hendrik Ilves and former Lithuanian foreign minister Gabrielius Landsbergis recently called for the creation of a new permanent discussion forum on hybrid threats and the potential construction of a Baltic regional security organisation with robust military capabilities.
In the European Parliament and Nato gatherings, Baltic officials are calling for European countries to re-evaluate their risk aversion in confronting Russian aggression head-on and to more thoroughly sanction the financial infrastructure that supports the shadow fleet. The efficacy of Ukraine's cross-border operations and the limitations of Russia's retaliatory capacity has caused some Baltic officials to view an exclusive focus on deterrence as obsolete.
Ahead of the Nato summit in the Hague later this month, there will be a major focus on Ukraine's future within the organisation. Time should also be devoted to addressing the concerns of the Nato alliance's three most vulnerable and committed participants.
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The Guardian
33 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Palestine Action spraying paint is not terrorism. As ministers abuse their powers, I feel a duty to speak out
Strongly worded emails are not doing it. Appeals to MPs are not doing it. Taking to the streets in our hundreds of thousands with banners and placards is not working. Elected representatives from every party in parliament have stood in the Commons and asked the government to act. Some government ministers themselves have condemned Israel's starvation of Palestinians in Gaza. Every poll of public opinion shows that the nation demands we stop arming Israel, and wants to see an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire. But none of these things are working. Keir Starmer and his cabinet remain impervious to all calls for humanitarian intervention, and Israel is still killing children in Gaza with the support of the British government. To proscribe as 'terrorist' a non-violent direct action group such as Palestine Action threatens the fundamental rights of freedom of expression, and of peaceful protest. Surely the government should only ever apply the Terrorism Act with the utmost restraint and precision. Otherwise it allows the state to repress civil liberties that have been dearly fought for and won, and which represent the bedrock of our democracy. Those civil liberties have already come under real and dangerous threat. The powers given to the police have incrementally increased to an alarming degree, owing in part to the Terrorism Act of 2000 and the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act of 2022. These have both led to the right of public protest being seriously eroded, and afforded the police much greater powers and significantly less accountability. We have for some time seen these powers being used to suppress lawful protest and to detain peaceful protesters. In addition, leaving aside its members, the proscription of Palestine Action will directly affect many other activists who are deeply concerned about the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza. Even to be seen to support PA's non-violent direct action will be to risk being criminalised. The government's response to embarrassing security breaches at RAF bases by Palestine Action seems disproportionate, and highlights, I think, the influence on them of vested interests. There has long been a campaign by senior rightwing politicians, arms company executives and pro-Israel lobby groups to shut down Palestine Action and have it proscribed. Lockheed Martin UK is a key manufacturer of parts for the F-35 fighter jets that have helped Israel flatten the Gaza Strip, kill more than 56,000 people and create more child amputees per capita than anywhere else in the world. The government ended direct sales to Israel of some weapons, but created an 'F-35 exemption' allowing sales of these parts to continue to reach Israel via the US, where the planes are assembled. The Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems also operates on UK soil, and our government has lucrative bilateral deals with the company. As far back as 2022 the then home secretary, Priti Patel, held a meeting with Martin Fausset, the CEO of Elbit Systems in the UK, to discuss how to deal with Palestine Action. The definition of terrorism as laid out in the Terrorism Act of 2000 is clear, and includes 'serious damage to property'. Does spraying red paint on to metal constitute serious damage? The condemnation of this spraying of red paint on to planes as expressed by the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, does not appear to be matched by any equivalent condemnation by her of red blood sprayed on to the tented walls of Gaza. So yes, crimes concerning damage to property have been committed, but there are already laws in place to deal with them. Labelling these as terrorism only serves to deepen the UK government's complicity in the war crimes being committed in Palestine. In a further act of desperation, efforts have been made to try to undermine the motives of Palestine Action by making a tenuous link to Iran, with unnamed Home Office sources telling newspapers it is investigating the group's finances. Smear campaigns such as this are part of a wider policy by government to intimidate and clamp down on dissent. I have had a small taste of this myself. On 18 January, I attended a rally in Whitehall organised by Stop the War – and noticed immediately that the tactics of the police that day seemed to be markedly different. Present in their thousands, they were already kettling people at the start of the event, and behaving in a manner that seemed aggressive and provocative. The march to the BBC, which had been planned to protest against its coverage of the conflict, had been prohibited by the Met at short notice, and the gathering was confined to Whitehall. I was asked to join a group of about 12 people who would form a symbolic delegation, and request passage through police lines to reach the BBC. There we planned to lay flowers at the door. Reaching the police lines, after some hesitation and resistance, an officer allowed us through. Shortly after that, however, our progress was curtailed by another police line. It was here that I saw at close hand the disproportionate tactics used by police. I witnessed further vanloads of police arriving in the area, kettling peaceful protesters and making numerous arrests – 77 in total that day. Three weeks later I was sent a letter from the Met threatening me with charges under section 14 of the Public Order Act. I then faced a three-hour police interview, before being told after several weeks (and several thousand pounds of legal fees) that I would face no further action. Over the past 21 months, I have met many hundreds of people who come out – often travelling long distances – to protest against this genocide. Old people and young, people of every faith, race, generation and ethnic identity. They come in horror at the brutality being inflicted on the population of Gaza. And many of those in our midst are Jewish. But still we are accused by lobby groups of antisemitism. This I disregard; I am married to a Jewish man, whose mother was a refugee from Hitler's Vienna. She escaped just in time in 1938 as a refugee, and most of her family were subsequently wiped out in the Holocaust. My children define themselves as Jewish, and we have many beloved Jewish friends, all of whom are appalled by the activities of Benjamin Netanyahu, his government and the Israel Defense Forces. These Jewish friends are people driven by compassion, humanity and a sense of right and wrong that will not yield to intimidation. In Gaza, the world is watching the most heinous acts of violence that I have witnessed in my lifetime. It is as if the skin has been ripped off the face of humanity to reveal terrifying depths of sadism and depravity. I am intensely aware of this thought: I do not want to find myself at the end of my life looking back at this time regretting that I could have done something and didn't – that I was too frightened to speak out, or to act. Palestine Action and its supporters will have no such regrets. Our current British government, however, may well. Juliet Stevenson is an award-winning actor Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
Telegraph
an hour ago
- Telegraph
NHS will have to pay more for British doctors, Streeting is warned
Wes Streeting's plan to prioritise British doctors for NHS jobs risks piling more pressure on the public finances by driving up wages, analysts have warned. Economists at the Institute For Public Policy Research (IPPR), a Left-leaning think tank, said proposals by the Health Secretary to ensure medics who train in Britain are first in the queue for NHS roles will embolden staff to ask for higher pay. The commitment to hire no more than one in 10 doctors from overseas is part of Labour's 10-year plan to revive the health service as waiting lists remain above 7m. However the long awaited proposals – published this week – also come as doctors threaten strike action over a 'derisory' 4pc pay rise and junior doctors demand much higher increase. Seb Rees, at the IPPR, said that while Mr Streeting was 'right to want to train more homegrown doctors and reduce the NHS's reliance on overseas recruitment', it risked pushing up staffing costs. He said: 'The wider impact on pay is unclear, but greater reliance on domestic graduates could put upward pressure on wages. Unlike overseas staff, UK-trained doctors may be more likely to push for higher settlements over time.' Mr Rees added that the Government's ambition to reduce reliance on new overseas recruits from a quarter to one in 10 would be met by the reality of an ageing population that would increase demand for NHS services. 'The UK taxpayer makes a major investment in medical training, and it's simply not acceptable that many British doctors finish their training only to find there's no job waiting for them,' he said. 'However, the Government must be realistic about the scale of the challenge. Today, around two thirds of newly registered doctors are international medical graduates. 'Rebalancing this will require sustained investment in our training pipeline. With an ageing population and rising demand, we will need a larger medical workforce overall – and international recruitment has often been the fastest and most cost-effective way to meet that need. NHS has become 'over-reliant' on foreign workers Writing on social media site X, Mr Streeting vowed to revamp the NHS workforce. He said: 'I'm proud that the NHS has always been open to international talent, but the truth is that we've become over-reliant – including on countries with severe shortages of healthcare staff. 'We'll going to do more to grow our own and retain on talent.' The NHS is one of the world's biggest employers, directly employing 1.7m people in England. Health spending is by far the largest in Whitehall, with a day-to-day budget of roughly £200bn, half of which is spent on staffing costs. Other analysts highlighted that Mr Streeting's plans largely mirrored that of the previous government's proposals, which expected 'around 9pc to 10.5pc of our workforce to be recruited from overseas'. Max Warner, at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, a think tank, said: 'The NHS workforce is almost certainly going to have to grow in the coming years and decades to meet growing demand. Provided there is sufficient domestic supply of healthcare staff, this announcement doesn't necessarily affect the total number of staff working in the NHS. 'If this domestic supply is insufficient, then this could either mean we rely more on international recruitment or grow the NHS workforce at a slower rate.'
Telegraph
an hour ago
- Telegraph
Sir Bill Beaumont demands end to rugby infighting
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