Last summer I took a trip to the Baltic with my wife. That cold, shallow, salty sea, which recently became a battlefield for the Russian hybrid war, bathes an area rich in tradition and history. A history with often tragic contours, like that of the whole of Europe.

During the Second World War, the Nazis exterminated the Jewish population of Vilnius, which was called the Jerusalem of the North. On its frozen sea in 1921 Trotsky crushed the rebellion of the sailors of the Kronstadt fortress, which he had called the ‘honour and glory of the revolution’ four years earlier.

In the early 18th century, the Baltic was the scene of the Great Northern War between Russia and Sweden. Also in those areas, the knights of the Teutonic Order (later to become the Duchy of Prussia) and its allies led the Northern Crusades between the 12th and 13th centuries.

A story full of events and blood.

From Finland to Tallinn, then to Riga, finally to Vilnius, we encountered the Ukrainian flag everywhere, from the Helsinki central station to the bar frequented by Estonian students, to the Lithuanian presidential palace. In Tallinn, the Russian embassy was surrounded by yellow-and-blue flags and anti-war posters of Putin, who is compared to the Nazis (while in Italy for many, too many people, the Nazi would be Zelensky).

In addition to the Ukrainian flag, we found EU and NATO flags everywhere in the three Baltic countries: for them being in the EU is a great advantage. The intelligent use of European funds (unlike in Italy) has enabled extraordinary economic and social growth. As for NATO, for these countries it represents a security (although certainties have faded with Trump 2): the Atlantic alliance is the deterrent that prevents Russian troops from being on their lands again, for the fourth time in little more than a century.

In Riga, the capital of Latvia, after a much-needed stop in the Jugendstil quarter with the palaces built by Sergei Eisenstein’s father (the one in Battleship Potёmkin, which wasn’t a piece of shit), we returned to the old town and visited the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia. Opened in 1993, it is located in a square that still houses a Soviet-era monument. The museum also houses the KGB headquarters in another building. One of the aims of the museum is‘to show what happened in Latvia, to its land and people, under the occupation of two totalitarian regimes (the Soviet and the Nazi) from 1940 to 1991’.

There are all kinds of documents in the museum, starting with the independence of Latvia after the collapse of the tsarist empire. It moves on to the victorious war of independence against the Soviets, when Lenin tried to regain control of those territories, an attempt that succeeded in Ukraine but failed in Finland as well as the Baltic countries.

Then in 1939 comes the Ribbentrop – Molotov pact and suddenly Hitler and Stalin become allies. They share out Poland and establish areas of influence in Eastern Europe. From Hitler, then, the green light for the USSR to take back Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Finland. With the Baltic countries Stalin succeeded where Lenin had failed, but once again Finland did not give in. The short but bloody Winter War, fought practically in the dark and amidst snow and ice, in which the Russians deployed 100 times as many tanks as the Finns, was a bloodbath for the Soviets, who had a total of 400,000 soldiers dead, wounded or missing. In the end Stalin settles for a large portion of Karelia, a couple of islands and the Finnish outlet in the Arctic Sea. Finland loses 10% of its territory but protects its freedom to become one of the most democratic nations with one of the best welfare systems in the world. Later, the Finns fought again against the Russians and then also against the German Nazis in Lapland. The memory of these events led to the decision not to abolish compulsory military service, maintaining a well-trained army and a reserve of almost one million. Over 70% of Finns declared themselves ready to fight in the event of an invasion.

Latvia, on the other hand, returned under the Russian yoke, interrupted by the Nazi invasion when Hitler broke the Nazi-Soviet pact, only to return to the Soviets in 1944. One in ten Latvians is deported to Siberia, for various reasons. Children included. Lithuania and Estonia suffer the same fate, including the family of former Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, now EU High Representative for Foreign Policy.

The three Baltic countries had to wait until the collapse of the USSR to gain independence. But they set about speeding up the process, with strikes and demonstrations and above all with the human chain that united some two million people, from Vilnius to Tallinn, on 23 August 1989, exactly on the 50th anniversary of the Ribbentrop – Molotov pact.

Often, among pro-Russians, one hears talk of Russophobia or Nazi sympathies of the inhabitants of the Baltic countries, as indeed for the Ukrainians. There are certainly right-wing extremists, as in the rest of Europe. But all in all far fewer than in other countries, where they are often directly or indirectly financed by the Kremlin, such as AfD. There are some tensions with Russian communities. But certainly, in the Baltic, mistrust of the Russians is justified, since from the first Tsar (the Prince of Muscovy Ivan IV in the 16th century) to today, regardless of the type of regime, their history is a history of invasions.

The EU’s eastern border is sensitive. The long series of sabotage in the Baltic Sea and the hacker attacks confirm the fears of the countries along this border and indicate to the entire EU that Russia, and probably to a lesser extent also Russia and China, are not friendly nations but a source of danger.

If in Italy we have seen EU flags burning, in the Baltic the same flags fly and are carried with pride.