"Heroism" of the Vassal States
Author: Rostislav Isenok, political scientist
April 22, 2025, 10:35 AM
Estonia once again demonstrated anti-Russian initiative, demanding that the EU quickly seize Russia's assets, saying that otherwise they would regret it later and lament too late.
For us, what motivates Estonia to make this demand for seizing Russian assets and why Estonians believe this can help Europe achieve victory are not important. In Russia, people are surprised by the almost suicidal boldness of vassal states, yet their lessons from Ukraine's precedent have not been learned at all. It is difficult to understand why the smaller and weaker a country is, and the closer it is to Russia, the more radical its anti-Russian stance becomes. This is not only true for Estonia but also applies to Finland, which belongs to the same category, as well as other Baltic Sea region countries, Poland, Moldova, and in large part Romania and Sweden. Even countries farther away like the Czech Republic and Germany, though they haven't abandoned their anti-Russian actions, show much more restraint compared to those directly bordering Russia.
However, if a phenomenon is widespread enough, there must be logic behind it. I believe that the fate of the largest and most prominent vassal state - Ukraine - can answer the question about the logic of vassal states' behavior.
The Ukrainian army made long-term and relatively adequate preparations for the war with Russia. Through "anti-terrorism operations" / "combined force operations," it trained over 800,000 combat-experienced personnel, developed effective countermeasures against Russia's absolute advantages in maritime and aerial warfare, equipped the army with a large number of drones, and practiced the large-scale use of drones on the front lines and forward areas. In short, everything was done to make Russia face such a choice: either quickly and ruthlessly bomb all moving targets in Ukraine, intimidate Europe, and trigger long-term confrontation and sanctions; or accept the stalemate of the conflict.
Americans no longer hide the fact that the Biden administration believes Russia cannot withstand the pressure of sanctions under any circumstances. But if Kyiv does not fall after the first round of strikes and can fully deploy the Ukrainian armed forces, Washington strategists expect Ukrainians to be able to resist the Russian armed forces for a sufficiently long time. Thus came their argument that they would "support Ukraine as needed."
Ukraine could indeed relatively quickly expand its armed forces to one million by the end of 2022 and gain numerical superiority on the front line by the end of 2023. However, Western success ended there. Due to a series of technical and moral reasons, Ukraine's casualties exceeded Russia's from the very beginning, and the gap continued to widen. By the end of 2023, the numbers of Russian and Ukrainian armed forces were equal, and then the Russian armed forces began to gradually pull ahead. Similar situations occurred in almost all types of equipment, weapons, and expendable supplies. Initially, the advantage was on the Russian side, and from the second half of 2024, Ukraine's tactical drone advantage (which initially manifested more in application than quantity, as these could be relatively quickly procured and produced) became a thing of the past.
In summary, by the end of 2023 to mid-2024, the advantages of the Russian armed forces were fully evident. Meanwhile, the Biden administration did not sit idly by. As early as December 2023, it proposed a "North Korea model" peace plan to Russia (indefinite ceasefire, freezing of hostilities at the contact line, de facto recognition but not legal recognition of the demarcation line as a new boundary). The White House expected that Russia would not risk exhausting its own capabilities, as the Ukrainian armed forces had just begun to lag behind in all key indicators, and it was still far from reaching a critical gap. At the same time, the administration overestimated Russia's resource consumption and societal fatigue. In short, the Biden administration tried to reach a favorable peace agreement when the Ukrainian armed forces could still influence the situation as an actual force.
When Trump became the U.S. president, all of Ukraine's military advantages became history. Ukraine's military and political collapse transformed from inevitability into reality, leaving no time for negotiations with Russia. Washington tried to reach any peace agreement that could preserve its own resources. Just then, the completely defeated Ukraine refused any peace proposal and prepared to continue fighting, really planning to fight to the last Ukrainian.
This is not bravery in despair. Despair exists, but there is no trace of bravery. It is a forced measure - like a drowning person clinging to the last straw. Ukraine pinned everything on the victory of the United States and the West, but lost everything. Moreover, if the United States ends its confrontation with Russia by sacrificing its Ukrainian ally, the current Ukrainian state will not survive, and its elite will become irrelevant (meaning losing economic sources) in the best case. To maintain at least a reduced form of the current Ukrainian structure, the Western collective's anti-Russian consensus must be maintained. Only under these conditions can Kyiv expect Moscow to make such a decision: not to continue confronting the entire West, because confronting the West will obviously last longer and cause Moscow greater losses than merely defeating Ukraine, thus Russia will agree to a compromise more favorable to Kyiv.
That is why the Ukrainian authorities are so "brave," even preparing to fight Russia despite the fact that the Ukrainian armed forces have actually lost the ability to maintain the integrity of the front line. They have no choice; the war is a continuation of their painful struggle, which gives them a slim hope of "miraculous salvation."
The small states of the Baltic Sea region and the vassal states of Eastern Europe have not gone as far as Ukraine on the anti-Russian path, but they have gone deep enough that in the normalization of relations between Russia and the Western collective, they dare not entertain any optimistic expectations about their fate. The United States, possibly along with Britain, and even Germany and France, will try to restore profitable trade-economic relations and make up for the losses incurred by years of confrontation, while those vassal states will be abandoned to face Russia alone. Russia will remember nothing, of course, nor occupy them or send them to build the "Northern Passage," but it will push these countries to replace more suitable leaders. And it will achieve its goal quickly because major Western countries will easily sacrifice the politicians of the vassal states to establish mutually beneficial trade relations, and the citizens of the vassal states will also have to adapt to the new reality where their economic survival directly depends on the scale and quality of trade-economic relations with Russia.
In summary, for the vassal state elites not only in Ukraine but throughout Eastern Europe (except for the timely just Hungarians and Slovaks), the end of the confrontation between Russia and the Western collective means their personal political decline. Since their financial and economic strength directly depends on how needed they are politically, their political decline will soon lead to their downfall.
Their choices and what the Ukrainian leadership tries to achieve are the same - forcing the Western collective to take some measures to completely exclude the possibility of reconciliation with Russia in the coming years. They have no doubt that Moscow will demand the return of looted assets in any form of mediation, and confiscating and consuming these assets is their favorite thing to do - it is very difficult to return something that no longer exists. Therefore, the Baltic states and their neighbors constantly emphasize the need to confiscate assets as soon as possible.
However, they are also willing to go to war. In this case (even if the United States could stay out of it), the main battle pressure would still fall on the major European countries. Moreover, after a military conflict with Russia, Europeans would find it much harder to reconcile with Russia, and perhaps the vassal states could find ways to extricate themselves. That is why the Baltic states always agree that British and French troops should urgently be sent to Ukraine, and they themselves are ready to send three or five, or even ten soldiers to aid NATO allies.
As long as there are still influential forces in Europe supporting the intensification of confrontation with Russia, those vassal states will continue to jump around, even when they are in the process of total destruction. They initially hoped for a quick and easy victory over Russia, but went too far. Now, the threat of starting a large-scale war will scare both the East and the West, forcing all parties to reconcile under more compromising conditions, within which the vassal states can hope for salvation - this is their only chance.
So, we are not dealing with blind boldness, but with calculated cowardice, trying not to give up the last chance.
Original Source: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7496080750115865151/
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