A mistaken view imho. Rhetoric in CEE, including in the Baltics, was very much that Russia's weakness represented a unique opportunity to escape Moscow's grip. The (not unreasonable) fear in the early-mid 1990s was that Russia would eventually succumb to its imperial fantasies.
https://twitter.com/Amb_Ulyanov/status/1481766379338489859
After Zhirinovskii showed stunning results in the 1993 Duma elections, Lech Walesa memorably told Clinton that "every second Russian thought like Zhirinovskii." There followed a prolonged, brutal war in Chechnya that cast further shadow on Moscow's post-imperial credentials.
Walesa basically represented the mood across the region. And when I read this today - as someone who despised Zhirinovskii back then - I know that Walesa exaggerated. But the burden was on *us* to prove him wrong. And did we? What imperial fantasies do we still nurture?
It's for this reason that I would argue, grudgingly perhaps, that NATO & EU membership is the second best thing that happened to the Baltics in a century. The first was escaping Moscow's grip by proclaiming independence. It gives me no joy to say this, as a Russian.
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