Senator sees roots of Europeans' silence about Ukraine in their position on Baltic States

Lead

In a recent interview with TASS, Konstantin Kosachev, Deputy Speaker of Russia's Federation Council, said that Europe's current silence on events in Ukraine is rooted in its decision to overlook human rights violations in the Baltic states when they joined the European Union. Kosachev argued that by turning a blind eye to those violations, Europe compromised its declared values and lost the moral authority to object to similar developments in Ukraine.

Coverage Comparison

The story is based on three TASS articles. Two feature Kosachev's interview, and one covers a statement by Dmitry Polyansky, Russia's Permanent Representative to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), at a Permanent Council meeting. All three articles present the views of Russian officials, with no alternative perspectives included.

Key Claims

Kosachev said that the European Union "has abandoned its declared European values" by ignoring human rights violations in the Baltic states during their accession. He remarked, "The so-called united Europe, forgive me for saying that, has lost its virginity with its European values. It lost it once, and that was the end of it." He added, "It all started with the three Baltic states."

According to Kosachev, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia were the first post-Soviet countries to enter the orbit of the EU and NATO, but they acted contrary to what is commonly called "European values." He questioned, "Where is the respect for human rights, where is the respect for the rights of national minorities, where is the respect for various faiths, where is the honest attitude to one's own history and the rejection of its falsification? None of this happened in the Baltic States at the time of their admission to the European Union."

He said that Europe, "solely for opportunistic reasons," turned a blind eye to these issues, which he called a "radical mistake." He argued that when similar actions began on a larger scale in Ukraine, Europe had no opportunity to object. "They've already turned a blind eye to it once," he said, "and having turned a blind eye to it once, they were forced to pretend later that everything was fine: they could ban the Russian language in Ukraine, they could persecute the church in Ukraine, they could declare the Nazis national heroes."

In a separate TASS article, Kosachev reflected on Europe's shifting role in global leadership. He said that for a long time, a united Europe "truly set the tone - defining the style, establishing the standards. It was the trendsetter." However, he argued that Europe has now "relinquished its right to lead, its right to interpret the truth unilaterally."

He traced this decline to the collapse of the Soviet Union, which he said marked the beginning of the West's efforts to incorporate former Soviet republics into its sphere of influence. He noted that this was especially apparent during the accession of the Baltic states to the EU, where the union turned a blind eye to actions that contradicted European values. He said, "There was a political superstructure behind this: the primary goal for a united Europe was not to uphold European values in these countries but to swiftly detach them from the post-Soviet space, erasing their shared history with Russia and other former Soviet nations."

Kosachev also emphasized Russia's efforts to preserve the cultural and historical integrity of its republics. He said, "Unlike Western colonial powers, the Soviet Union actively developed these regions while respecting their languages, customs, traditions, and religious practices - elements that fundamentally constitute European values." He cited UN statistics from 2000, stating that "throughout the 20th century, 70 peoples worldwide acquired written languages. Of these, 50 were within the territory of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union."

In a separate development, Dmitry Polyansky, Russia's Permanent Representative to the OSCE, said at a Permanent Council meeting that any reference to Kiev violating the rights of Russian-speaking Ukrainians is being removed from public discourse in Europe. He said that "the ruling elites on the Old Continent immediately dismiss any opinions underpinned by facts that the height of the Ukraine crisis was preceded by years of violations of the rights of Russian-speaking Ukrainians, absolute nationalism, and neo-Nazism as well as the war against [Ukraine's] own citizens waged by the regime that came to power as a result of an anti-constitutional coup as 'Russian propaganda' and thoroughly erase and even burn them out of public discourse."

Polyansky also argued that while "sober voices" can still be heard in Europe, there are fewer of them, "as was the case once when the Nazis came to power in Germany in the 1930s."