Ex Intelligence Director of Estonia. Member of Parliament. PACE Chair of the Cttee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights Silence is the real crime against humanity
Tallinn, Estonia
Joined June 2009
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80 years ago 17 East European nations were sold out to communist tyranny so that the West could enjoy peace and liberal democracy. 30 years ago Eastern Europe won back its freedom despite efforts of our friends to โkeep stabilityโ. 1/6
Moscowโs offer of separate โnon-aggressionโ pacts is a naked attempt to divide NATO by making each member wonder whether abandoning its allies might buy it safety. Describing this as an offer of โadditional security guaranteesโ accepts the Kremlinโs premise: that Russia is entitled to threaten European countries and then offer selected governments exemption from its aggression.
Russia has no right to attack any of them in the first place. Peaceful coexistence is an obligation, not a favour Moscow can sell in exchange for political obedience.
The proposal targets the foundation of NATO: the certainty that an attack on one ally will bring assistance from the others. Separate bargains would introduce doubt about who would help, who would stand aside and whose cooperation Moscow had already secured. That uncertainty would weaken deterrence before a single shot was fired.
The Washington Treaty expressly guards against this. Article 8 requires every ally โnot to enter into any international engagement in conflict with this Treaty.โ Article 5 requires assistance to an attacked ally, while Article 3 requires members to maintain and develop their individual and collective capacity to resist attack. A pact requiring an ally to withhold assistance, obstruct collective defence or accept restrictions incompatible with those duties would violate the Treaty. Calling it โnon-aggressionโ would change nothing.
The proposals reported so far distinguish non-aggression pacts from commitments not to assist another partyโs adversaries. We should not pretend that an unpublished treaty already contains the latter. But that is precisely the test any actual agreement must face: does it preserve allied obligations in full, or purchase Russian promises by compromising them?
For NATO, accepting security based on separate accommodations with Moscow would be strategic suicide. For individual members, it would mean weakening the collective protection on which their own security depends and replacing it with a promise from the power threatening them. A government might imagine it had purchased an exception. It would have helped dismantle the protection it would need when that exception expired.
The moral failure would be equally stark. While Russia occupies Ukrainian territory and attacks European security, bargaining for personal exemption would reward coercion and leave others to bear its costs. No European government should purchase apparent safety by making its neighbours less safe.
If Moscow wants to demonstrate non-aggression, it can withdraw from Ukraine, end its threats and hostile operations against Europe, and respect the sovereignty of its neighbours. It does not need separate treaties to stop doing what it has no right to do.
Europeโs security cannot depend on which countries Russia, famous for breaking all treaties and every promise, temporarily promises to spare.
๐ท๐บ Moscow floats non-aggression pacts with individual NATO members, as Medinsky says Europe's security order was the real topic in Abu Dhabi
Russia has started to put its own vision for Europe's security on paper, and it works country by country.
Alexey Drobinin, head of foreign policy planning at the Russian Foreign Ministry, told a security forum on Wednesday that Moscow sees three models. The first is a defensive alliance or bilateral mutual assistance treaties, like those Russia has with Belarus and North Korea. The second is a political pledge not to help each other's adversaries in case of aggression, like Moscow's pact with Iran. The third is bilateral non-aggression pacts.
"For example, agreements of this kind could be reached, among other things, with individual NATO member states, which would then receive, for instance, additional individual security guarantees from the Russian Federation," Drobinin said, according to video of the speech reported by Reuters. TASS quoted him as framing it under the principle of "equal and indivisible security," the same language Moscow used in its December 2021 treaty drafts before the full-scale invasion.
The timing is deliberate. Vladimir Medinsky said a new security framework for Europe had been the central theme of the two days of talks in Abu Dhabi, according to Reuters, though he gave no details. US officials have said they are open to discussing Europe's overall security architecture. Some European politicians reject that, arguing a ceasefire in Ukraine must come first.
The appeal for Moscow is obvious. Separate deals with individual allies would offer each capital a private Russian guarantee and quietly weaken NATO's collective commitment under Article 5. No NATO government had publicly responded in the reports reviewed, and Drobinin's remarks are a proposal from a Foreign Ministry official, not an offer tabled in the talks as far as is known.
For the US, the question is how far the Abu Dhabi track drifts into redesigning European security while Washington is also floating an "Article 5-like" guarantee for Ukraine. For Europeans, it is whether they can shape that conversation before others do it for them.
What to watch: whether Kushner and Witkoff hear the same menu from Putin in Moscow on Thursday, and how NATO capitals respond in Dublin.
Video: "WE ACHIEVED FULL MUTUAL UNDERSTANDING", Putin on CSTO security talks.
Albert Einsteinโs Letter to the Rector of the University of Tartu welcoming the decision to establish a Chair of Jewish Studies in Estonia
"May this demonstration of exemplary national tolerance receive the well-deserved attention and recognition throughout Europe."
16 October 1930
To His Magnificence
Professor Dr. Kรถpp
Rector of the University
Tartu
Highly Esteemed Mr. Rector,
Mr. J. Blumenfeld of Tartu reported on the forthcoming establishment of a Chair of Jewish Studies at the University of Tartu and on the understanding and benevolent reception that this plan has met with from the university authorities.
I welcome its establishment with the wish that it may prosper, and ask you, highly esteemed Professor, to accept this expression of joy and gratitude for the support you have shown.
May this demonstration of exemplary national tolerance receive the well-deserved attention and recognition throughout Europe.
With the highest esteem,
A. Einstein
โEveryone needs to reach 5%. ... Our Baltic allies are all going to get there next year.โ
What do you mean, next year? Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have all already reached or exceeded 5% of GDP in defence spending this year.
defence24.com/geopolitics/naโฆ
Stop repeating the Kremlin-invented, misleading tautology โNATO infrastructure in Scandinavia and the Baltic states.โ All infrastructure in the Baltic states and Scandinavia IS NATO infrastructure. One cannot and will not "withdraw" it from NATO member states.
According to media reports, the Kremlin has conveyed to the US a proposal for a two-stage ceasefire, which includes an energy truce until the New Year and preparations for a full-fledged peace agreement by spring 2027.
At the same time, Russian officials publicly reject the idea of temporary truces in specific sectors.
putin proposes preparing a full-fledged peace agreement by spring 2027 โ it is reported that dmitriev, during negotiations with Trump and Kushner, voiced a number of RF conditions.
In particular, these are:
โข An energy truce is possible on the condition of halting Ukrainian strikes on Russian "civilian infrastructure," primarily oil and gas facilities.
โข Russia allows for a territorial compromise while preserving Ukrainian control over the un occupied part of Donbas.
โข However, it demands a reduction in the Armed Forces of Ukraine and armaments, concessions regarding the Russian language and the Russian Orthodox Church.
โข Also, the withdrawal of NATO infrastructure from the Baltic states and Scandinavia.
โข The Kremlin may agree to the deployment of foreign troops in Ukraine exclusively in the western regions, provided that Russian demands are met.
Honoured and humbled to receive the 2026 Magnitsky Human Rights Award. This means a great deal to me. Thank you to Magnitsky Global Justice Campaign for the recognition, and to the people whose work and friendship have made my own work possible.
@GMJCampaign
BREAKING: Eerik-Niiles Kross (@EerikNKross) wins the 2026 Magnitsky Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Magnitsky Justice Movement.
From Estonia's independence struggle to introducing Europe's first Magnitsky law, he has spent decades fighting for freedom
#MagnitskyAwards
Mark November 1 2026. Russiaโs worst single-day military losses since 1945. Ukraine reports 2,500 Russian troops killed or wounded - a war record.
For scale: Worst day in Afghanistan was 164 Soviet casualties in the 1984 Panjshir ambush. Several hundred a day in Grozny in early January 1995.
This proposal definitely deserves the 2026 Darwin Award for being the most idiotic idea anyone has come up with this year.
The U.S. proposal: a quick resumption of Russian natural-gas sales to Europe via Ukrainian pipelines, with an American company acting as an intermediary and money going to an escrow account. Our scoop. wsj.com/world/europe/u-s-pusโฆ
A joke from Odessa:
On November 6, we will celebrate the second anniversary of the 24 hours Trump is taking to end Putinโs three-day war, now nearing the end of its fifth year.
kyivindependent.com/i-dont-kโฆ
Iโve been corrected. The kids in Russian clothing were allegedly not the Homeland Security adviserโs children.
Ten more points to the GRU, because everyone thinks they were.
A child dressed as a Russian soldier in the White House remains a fact.
When your opponent pulls off a skilful operation, youโve got to respect him.
I donโt remember a better stunt to humiliate and belittle America than the Homeland Security adviser sending his kids to the Presidentโs Halloween line in Russian military uniform and dress.
GRU (or possibly SVR)โUSA: 10โ0.
This must rank among the top 10 mindf..ks of all time.
And I really want to know how they got to him.
When your opponent pulls off a skilful operation, youโve got to respect him.
I donโt remember a better stunt to humiliate and belittle America than the Homeland Security adviser sending his kids to the Presidentโs Halloween line in Russian military uniform and dress.
GRU (or possibly SVR)โUSA: 10โ0.
This must rank among the top 10 mindf..ks of all time.
And I really want to know how they got to him.
Novaya Gazeta, one of the last media outlets in Russia striving to remain independent, has written its own obituary.
The title: โWe have been killed.โ
We must haunt the killers to the end. Because they cannot kill the spirit.
Read the statement in full.
Novaya Gazeta in Russia closed its doors yesterday.
novayagazeta.ru/articles/202โฆ
I would have thought the VPโs national security adviser actually knew what Article 5 says.
It does not say anything about โconsultingโ. (Thatโs Article 4.)
NATO Article 5 is a commitment to treat an armed attack against one ally as an attack against all and to assist the ally attacked, including through armed force if deemed necessary.
According to this, Russia conducts terror attacks against Europe but what "undermine the security of the continent" are the critical public statements about those acts by European leaders.
C'mon. Don't buy this crap, its the oldest trick in Russian playbook.
reuters.com/business/financeโฆ
The Russians keep destroying things and then claim everyone owes them for their hard workโฆ
Estonia says it was Russian sabotage. balticflank.substack.com/p/tโฆ
Happy day for Europe
Serbiaโs strongman leader Vucic concedes defeat to student-led movement in seismic political shift apnews.com/article/serbia-elโฆ
Exactly this. Whenever Moscow conquers a country, it is impoverished, polluted and destroyed. This is what happened to Estonia's economy (compared to Finland) during the Soviet Occupation. Estonia was wealthier than Finland in 1938, the Soviet occupation (1944-1991) turned it 10 times poorer. Since freedom from the Russians was achieved, it's back on track.
โThe most interesting thing is that the toothless, provincial Russian masses are absolutely convinced that theyโre wanted everywhere and that people dream of Russkiy Mir coming to their countries.โ
โ Ukrainian political analyst Borys Tizengauzen explains Russkiy Mir in simple terms that even vatniks canโt argue against.
๐น youtube.com/@tizengauzen?si=โฆ
