The Baltic states fear that NATO is being complacent

Vilnius, the newly sparkling but also quaintly baroque capital of Lithuania, sits in a hot spot. Less than an hour’s drive to the east sprawls the Russian satrapy of Belarus, home now not just to Russian tactical nuclear weapons but soon, perhaps, to a large, seasoned Russian mercenary army under restaurauteur-cum-rebel-warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin. Just 150km to the west, bristling with combat planes, missiles and warships, lies the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. Closer than either, for older Lithuanians, linger memories of decades under Russian rule when their country, along with its two Baltic sisters, Estonia and Latvia, formed unwilling “republics” within the Soviet Union. Russia’s grinding war against nearby Ukraine, yet another former colony, brings those memories alive for younger people, too.