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Mart Kuldkepp Profile picture
Mart Kuldkepp
@KuldkeppMart
Professor of Estonian and Nordic History @UCL | Moral clarity enjoyer. Own views only.
14 subscribers
Aug 17 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
What else is in the Russian constitution: Article 29:
Everyone is guaranteed freedom of thought and speech.
Censorship is prohibited.
Everyone has the right to freely seek, receive, transmit, produce and disseminate information by any legal means.
Jun 18, 2024 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
The intelligence service in question was GRU. Morozov gathered information on Estonian foreign, interior and defence policy, infrastructure, elections and societal integration. He was paid for these activities, but the sums of money weren't large. He was recruited in the early 1990s, when studying at St Petersburg State University, where he also had to complete some military training. This is a common recruitment context for Russian intelligence services.
Feb 2, 2024 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
On 15 November 1917, Lenin and Stalin signed the 'Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia', recognising the 'right of peoples of Russia of a free self-determination, including secession and formation of a separate state.'

1/4 In February 1918, Estonians decided to secede from Russia and form their own state. On 28 November 1918, the Soviet 6th Red Rifle Division attacked the border town of Narva, marking the beginning of the Estonian War of Independence.

2/4
Aug 10, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
How to fail very thoroughly at life:

1. Go to Ukraine, if not already there (you can be anybody)

2. Share Russian propaganda on social media

3. Get a message from a Russian agent asking for information about e.g. troop movements, promising money as a reward 4. Send some kind of information to your handler

5. Oops, no money. Now instead you're being blackmailed by the same person, threatening to turn you in to the Ukrainian authorities if you don't continue working for them
Jul 12, 2023 • 18 tweets • 3 min read
A thread about Bucharest 2.0 🧶

It is now clear that the 2023 Vilnius summit communiqué regarding Ukraine's membership essentially repeats the same mistakes that were already made in Bucharest in 2008. (1/18) This time, too – after a year and a half of full-scale war – NATO’s willingness to commit to Ukraine’s membership remains limited to vague promises and platitudes. Ukraine's future is said to be in NATO, but only in some indefinite future, (2/18)
Jun 28, 2023 • 17 tweets • 3 min read
A thread about Russia's stability 🧶

Yevgeny Prigozhin's Bonapartist adventure last week once again highlighted that anything can happen in war-weakened Russia. We cannot rule out an actual coup d'état or outbreak of civil war, (1/17) and recent events have undoubtedly increased the likelihood of something like this happening. In the end, even the parties involved must have realised the dangers of destabilisation: Putin, (2/17)
Apr 24, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Authoritarians: usually super bad at splitting the opposition (and good at uniting it), which means that they're likely to go under sooner or later. In its dying days, the opponents of the USSR included anyone from Dugin to Yeltsin to Baltic (and Ukrainian) liberation movements. What authoritarians are good at is the gradual atomisation of the society to the level of families/individuals, with everyone suspecting everyone and being incentivised to attempt to survive by looking out strictly for themselves only.
Apr 12, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
The Estonian Internal Intelligence Service (Kaitsepolitsei) has just released their new yearbook of 2022/2023.

It's available here (in Estonian): s3.documentcloud.org/documents/2377… The topics include monuments, historical memory, and associated Russian propaganda efforts

'Positiivse arenguna on Eestis tekkinud kodanikuühiskonna liikmetest digiaktivistid, kes nii eesti kui ka vene keeles, vahel ka inglise keeles inforünnakutele vastu hakkavad ning näiliselt… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
Apr 10, 2023 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
The Nazi-Soviet 'victory arches' displayed at the joint German-Soviet military parade in Brest-Litovsk, Poland, on 22.09.1939 to mark the withdrawal of German troops to the demarcation line secretly agreed in the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, and the city's handover to the Red Army. Image The Nazi-Soviet agreement on the handover of the city of Brest-Litovsk by Germany and further actions of Soviet troops, signed a day earlier. Image
Apr 7, 2023 • 18 tweets • 5 min read
There are different ways of looking at the significance of Finland’s and Sweden’s NATO membership, but let’s consider a fundamental one: what their accessions amount to is a recognition of the current strategic reality that exists in the Baltic Sea Region.

A thread. 🧶 A note about realism: it's self-evidently a good thing. Any security actor must be realistic in order to make the correct predictions and to be prepared for all likely eventualities. Lack of realism leads to policy mistakes and costs that could have been avoided. As Russia’s… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
Apr 3, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Lesya Ukrainka stayed in Tartu, Estonia for ten days in the second half of February 1900 to visit her brother Mykhailo Kosach. At the time, he was working as a lecturer in physics at University of Tartu.

1 An illegal Ukrainian student circle called Українська громада had existed in Tartu since 1898.

While in Tartu, her brother invited Lesya to a poetry evening these students had organised in memory of Taras Shevchenko. There, she also read out some of her own poems.

2
Mar 28, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
A follow-up of sorts to this morning's story about Estonia and the European Peace Facility, where the most obvious factual errors have been silently omitted.

Still, the suggestion that Estonia might be 'gaming' the EU fund in question continues to be unsubstantiated.

1/3 Yes, Estonia is making use of the scheme as it exists, legally and to the maximum available extent in order to reacquire the capabilities it has transferred to Ukraine.

What else is it supposed to do? Estonia is a frontline state with Russia. It must rearm the best it can.

2/3
Mar 28, 2023 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
Milan Kundera on the word "Soviet" (1986) 🧶

SOVIET. An adjective I do not use. Union of Soviet Socialist Republics: ''Four words, four lies'' (Cornelius Castoriadis). The Soviet people: a verbal screen behind which all the Russified nations of that empire are meant to be forgotten. The term ''Soviet'' suits not only the aggressive nationalism of Communist Greater Russia but also the national nostalgia of the dissidents.
Mar 24, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Thomas Mann's radio address to Germans in March 1941:

'The resistance of England, the help it receives from America, are denounced by your leaders as “prolongation of the war”. They demand “peace”. They who drip with the blood of their own people and that of other peoples dare to utter this word. Peace – by that they mean subjugation, the legalization of their crimes, the acceptance of the humanly unendurable.
Mar 7, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
'Russia is too strong, there's no point in supporting Ukraine' and 'Russia is too weak, it's too dangerous to support Ukraine' are ultimately the same cowardly argument about how Russia should be entitled to impunity for breaking international law because it's a nuclear power. At the same time, the people making this argument generally wouldn't say that we should (regrettably, but still) be fine with the US, France and the UK invading other countries, changing their borders by force and effecting regime changes just because they're nuclear powers.
Feb 22, 2023 • 23 tweets • 4 min read
A thread about the last 12 months 🧶

On 25 February 2022, I wrote that Russia’s war against Ukraine, which it had massively escalated just the day before, cannot but end badly for Russia. Looking back at the year that has passed since then, I stand by this judgement. (1/23) Image But more can be said about what we have seen in the meantime: Russian brutality, Ukrainian heroic resistance, and Western indecisiveness. There have been plenty of reasons both for optimism and pessimism.

Overall, however, (2/23)
Feb 8, 2023 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
I disagree. There's no guarantee that Russia will 'never even attempt to attack a NATO state'. Being in NATO is not some kind of a magic protective spell. And Russia has made plenty of other stupid moves that have blown up in its face, but have also hurt everyone else.

1/ The only security guarantee that works against Russia is credible deterrence. NATO is the best form of credible deterrence that we have, at least for now, but its credibility can't be taken for granted. Attempts to undermine it are going on all the time.

2/
Feb 7, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
There's a persistent delusion in Russia that others somehow owe them respect or even alignment because they're scary and threatening. Whereas the only thing they'll get this way is counter-balancing on the first opportunity.

Behave like a schoolyard bully, get treated like one. The only kind of respect they do get this way is from those who are far away enough to not to be directly affected by Russian aggression, but who can be spooked into thinking it might affect them in the future. Inevitably, their solution to this problem is selling out others.
Feb 2, 2023 • 15 tweets • 3 min read
That Estonia was the first European country to officially recognise Soviet Russia (and was itself recognised by it) somehow hasn't earned Estonia any credit from Western tankies

It was the 1920 Tartu Peace Treaty that broke the anti-Bolshevik front. Others followed later. Why did Estonia go for it?

Because it had pushed the invading Red Army out of its territory. In fact, the Estonian army had by then occupied a good chunk of Russia itself on the other side of the border. Therefore it was time for ceasefire, peace talks, and reparations.
Jan 29, 2023 • 22 tweets • 3 min read
A thread about Western Orientalism towards Eastern Europe 🧶

Centering of Western points of view and othering attitudes towards the East (Orientalism) have for a long time been commonplace in Western social and political thinking. (1/22) That this is the case is inherently problematic because Western-centrism is a form of injustice towards the out-group (Easterners, however defined). But it is also something that has distorted the West’s judgement and is therefore detrimental to the West’s own interests, (2/22)
Jan 27, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
On the one hand, the transfer of Western main battle tanks to Ukraine is simply a logical continuation of other things that the West has already been doing. For example, Ukraine has been already given many ex-Soviet tanks, and Western infantry fighting vehicles.

1/4 Both of these are very similar capabilities to Western MBTs.

But on the other hand, it is an important turning point for the West. It is a strong signal to Ukraine, to Russia and (not least) to the West itself, that it sees Ukrainian victory as both possible and desirable.

2/4