Posted on 11/16/2014 12:32:51 PM PST by Tailgunner Joe
FOR several years after Lithuania was annexed by the USSR in World War II, thousands of so-called “forest brothers” waged a guerilla war against the Communist invaders.
Based on the fact that Lithuania remained Soviet Russian-occupied for half a century, it may be thought that the resistance, brave as it was, was ultimately futile.
Yet the deeds of the forest brothers have not been forgotten as a trip through the Lithuanian countryside confirms.
Every so often you come across an official sign on the road indicating that a significant battle against Soviet forces took place at a nearby site.
Until relatively recently, these sites marked with plaques to honour the anti-Communist fighters were mainly of historical interest. But they have taken on a certain resonance as Lithuanians contemplate a fresh threat from Russia hot on the heels of its intervention in eastern Ukraine.
On a recent visit to Lithuania, the homeland of my parents, I was struck by the depth of anxiety about Russia’s intentions. This is despite Lithuania and its fellow Baltic republics of Estonia and Latvia being members of the European Union and the Western military alliance NATO.
Flying into the capital Vilnius from Germany, engineer Vytautas Kairionis summed up feelings in the region.
“Russia is intervening in Ukraine first and we hope that we won’t be next, but we have to be ready,” he said. “There will be some sort of attempt for sure. Maybe not over the next year but over the next few years.
“Everyone is worried, everyone has a Plan B, but so far no one is seriously contemplating it.”
While the chances of an imminent Russian incursion appear slim, people are unsettled by ominous signs coming from their big neighbour to the east. Russia recently sent Lithuania a diplomatic note demanding that the Government track down the culprits who defaced a Soviet war memorial in Lithuania with an image of a Ukrainian flag.
This sort of demand evokes memories of the destabilisation of Lithuania by the Soviet Union in the lead-up to the country’s forced incorporation into the USSR in 1940. There followed a brutal repression, including the murder of innocent civilians and the deportation of tens of thousands of people to Siberian labour camps, from which many never returned.
Arturas Paulauskas, the Lithuanian Parliament’s national security and defence committee chairman, said there was good reason for his country to once again feel threatened by renewed Russian aggression in the region.
“Now occurring is an intensive propaganda and cyber war, and we see every day that Russia is trying to consolidate and unify the Russian-speaking community here,” he told the Herald Sun.
“It doesn’t want non-Lithuanians living here to integrate into mainstream society, it wants them to be oppositional and under its influence.”
Mr Paulauskas pointed to a Russian military build-up in the Kaliningrad region which borders Lithuania as evidence of President Vladimir Putin’s scare tactics.
“We’re not overdramatising the situation — a sober analysis shows that the threat is there, and it’s growing,” he said.
“Everything that’s happening shows that the seemingly peaceful situation here is quite fragile.”
Lithuania abolished compulsory military service some years ago, but the current political situation has sparked a flood of volunteers joining the homeguard organisation Sauliu Sajunga.
Prof Benediktas Juodka, the Parliament’s foreign affairs committee chairman, said that his own son, a lawyer, had signed up.
“He goes every weekend into the bush, stays overnight and does I’m not sure what there,” he said.
“I’m very impressed by this wave of patriotism, which is being driven by educated and professional young people. It shows that whatever happens we will defend our homeland.”
Lithuania, a country of only three million, has security guarantees on the basis of its NATO membership, with US President Barack Obama recently reaffirming the pledge to the Baltic States during a morale-boosting visit to the Estonian capital Tallinn.
NATO has stepped up operations in the region, including the extended deployment of fighter jets as a show of force. But Lithuanians are only too aware that ultimately, they must be responsible for their own defence.
Mr Paulauskas, who temporarily served as the nation’s president during a political crisis in 2004, said there was no doubt that help would come in the face of Russian aggression.
“But we have to be prepared to defend ourselves,” he said.
Mr Juodka said that NATO had “gone to sleep” after the Cold War, but the Ukraine conflict had reinvigorated the organisation.
“Nowhere in the world is 100 per cent safe, but after the Ukrainian tragedy I think that Europe has realised the need to strengthen its defences,” he said.
Hopefully, Vytautas Kairionis will not have to execute his Plan B, which involves heading straight for the Polish border in the event of a Russian invasion.
Millions of his countrymen are also clinging to that hope.
Putin = Pancreatic cancer?
Ok, so Putin is going to invade Ukraine, Poland, Finland, Lithuania, bomb England, shell Australia, occupy parts of a half dozen other countries too?
Seriously?
Poor Puty. He is so misunderstood.
It just isn't fair.
I’m not sure how you got that from this article. Usually Putinistas here at this forum assure us that nobody will lift a finger to stop Putin when he moves to take back the Baltic nations.
we need your thoughts here.
OK, so Hitler is going to invade Poland, Russia, Holland, Belgium, France, Greece, Egypt, Yugoslavia, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia and Denmark? Seriously?
Do search on FR and see article after article of all of the nations this guy is supposedly planning to invade or attack.
“OK, so Hitler is going to invade Poland, Russia, Holland, Belgium, France, Greece, Egypt, Yugoslavia, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia and Denmark?”
You are comparing WW2 Germany with Russia today?
And with hat army and navy is this guy going to simultaneously invade or attack all of these nations that all of these articles keep saying he is going to?
Well maybe it’s because he keeps flying his nuclear weapon armed bomber jets unannounced into the airspace of all those countries.
You think they’re just sightseeing maybe?
God help the forest brothers.
Why he was allowed to enter Australia for the G20 is beyond me. Look forward to him hanging from his heels someday.
Putin’s unprovoked invasions and reigns of terror in Georgia and Ukraine in support of genocidal ethnic separatists are very comparable to the acts of Hitler’s Nazi Germany. As long as western Civilization fails to confront the mass murderer and war criminal Putin, he will continue to murder and destroy those who do not wish their nations to fall once again under the brutal tyranny of the Kremlin.
Here’s how to deter the Russians:
Declare every able bodied adult a member of the Lithuanian militia. Arm them with a rifle and 1,000 rounds of ammunition. Practice the Swiss model of national defense.
L
He also basically said that all of the neighboring countries and ex-Soviet satellites were not real countries but were really part of Russia.
We could just remind Putin that Lithuania is part of our NATO alliance facing him.
“We could just remind Putin that Lithuania is part of our NATO alliance facing him.”
With Obama at the helm I doubt Putin will quake in his boots.
He said the exact same thing about Ukraine before he ordered his murdering terrorist army to invade.
He told President Bush, “You have to understand, George, that Ukraine is not even a country.”
This is a definite signal of his evil tyrannical mindset and intentions.
He thinks he can do what he likes in those former Soviet states because they really “are a part of Russia”.
The Russkies seem to think they have military superiority in Europe due to American draw downs of our Nukes and too few tanks readily deployable in those areas that they will invade. They thank the Start-3 treaty, for example, for making the United States to draw back on our nukes while allowing Russia to only improve theirs. Keep in mind the Russkies also have China, Iran, North Korea backing them up, just to name a few, and a whole lot of western countries infiltrated from top to bottom with their agents. From an article from Russkie pravda:
"How do things work in this area now? In early 2013, the Americans withdrew the last group of heavy Abrams tanks from Europe. In NATO countries, over the last 20 years, one new tank would replace 10-15 old, yet still capable, tanks. At the same time, Russia was not decommissioning its tanks.
As a result, today Russia is the absolute leader in this regard. In mid-2014, the balance of the Defense Ministry had as many as 18,177 tanks (T-90 - 400 pcs., T-72B - 7,144 pcs., T-80 - 4,744 pcs, T-64 - 4,000 pcs, T-62 - 689 pcs, and T-55 - 1200 pcs.).
Of course, only a few thousand tanks are deployed in permanent readiness units, and most of them remain at storage bases. Yet, NATO has the same picture. Therefore, the decisive superiority of Russian tanks has not gone anywhere since the times of the USSR.
Here is another surprise. As for tactical nuclear weapons, the superiority of modern-day Russia over NATO is even stronger.
The Americans are well aware of this. They were convinced before that Russia would never rise again. Now it's too late. "
http://english.pravda.ru/russia/politics/12-11-2014/129015-russia_nato_nuclear_surprise-0/
This isn't to say that the Russkies will do very well. They are mostly incompetents and common thugs and rapists who will attack us from their rust buckets. But, they will make a try, because that's what Russians do. We should have strangled them when we had the chance, but now we'll have to spend some blood to quite them again, and not without serious hurt.
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