“Trolls” and friends of the Kremlin expects a year of hard work. It will be difficult to portray Canada as hand dog Washington, and canadian soldiers in Latvia — as the messengers of the decaying imperialism of the West. Canada has always stressed its special position, more brightly began to be shown since the last election, when conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper has replaced the liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The views of Trudeau and U.S. President Donald trump differ on many important issues, for example, policy environment, immigration and towards Europe. However, what remains of Canada support to Ukraine and condemnation of Russian aggression.
It is because of this of aggression the North Atlantic Treaty organization decided to strengthen the defenses of the Eastern flank, the country is a NATO member Channel threw his usual restraint in the military sphere and agreed to take over the leadership of the multinational battle group in Latvia numbering in the battalion. Canada the deployment of their units will cost about $ 350 million, but not audible to the validity of these costs challenged a major government or opposition parties. Political circles in General unites the conviction that international law and internationally recognized borders allies worth defending.
Past experience of the Baltic States does not leave much room for doubt about the value of collective security, as well as what should be our attitude, what is really the most important. For this reason, hybrid enemy puts so much effort and money to undermine civilian confidence Balts. Canadians as well as Brits, Germans and others involved in strengthening the defense on the space of the Baltic States, become the target of information attacks. This situation in the last year foresaw (in an interview with canadian media iPolitics) the Deputy head of the intelligence service of the armed forces of Canada Stephen Burt: “it Will be created a constant flow of messages and public incidents that will force you to ask questions about what NATO is doing in Eastern Europe.”
In addition, separate prominent figures in politics Latvia has managed to compare actually quite insignificant presence of the NATO Alliance and the occupation of 1940 and concluded in 1939 with the USSR, the so-called Treaty, which preceded the occupation. The message about the dangers NATO is usually presented complete with hints for incorrect (from the point of view of those who makes allusions) geopolitical choice of Latvia. The right choice loudly is not known, but it should be understood that he is somewhere between the political positioning of the President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko and President of Moldova Igor Dodon. An interesting example is published in mid-April, the polling company SKDS “Rating by inhabitants of Latvia of sanctions and NATO,” which has now been commissioned by member of European Parliament Andrey Mamykin.
From the interpretation of the results, of course, implied that the assessment is negative. In relation to the North Atlantic Alliance, the question was: “In 2017 contingent already located in Latvia NATO soldiers will join other NATO soldiers. How, in your opinion, this fact can affect Latvian-Russian relations?”. This suggests a conclusion that is already present in Latvia “contingent” (in reality armed forces of Latvia without proper air defence systems, vehicles and other basic necessities) will receive some amazing “refill” (although, it is only a symbolic manifestation of solidarity). “This fact,” according to one of the proposed alternatives, which tend to agree 35% of respondents, “increase the risk of a military confrontation between Latvia and Russia.” Of course, there are risks, but their main source is not “contingent”, and the policy of the Kremlin, which is not mentioned in any of the introductory words and in one question of the survey.
We must also recall another survey that is also conducted by SKDS, but by order of the Ministry of defence of Latvia, and in the course of which it was found: 59% of inhabitants of Latvia believes that NATO’s presence multiplies the security of Latvia.
Go figure. But as they say, your gonna get it.
