(Ottawa) She was Latvia’s Iron Lady from 1999 to 2007. Under her leadership, the small Baltic state joined the European Union (EU) and NATO. In doing so, Vaira Vike-Freiberga has won the bad graces of President Vladimir Putin, whom she now watches with dread committing “war crimes” to feed his “narcissism” and satisfy his imperialist aims.
Posted at 5:00 a.m.
On the other side of the screen, the former president of Latvia, who lived for more than 30 years in Quebec, is in high spirits. For a little over an hour, installed in a room of her residence in Kuldiga, two hours west of Riga, the Latvian capital, the 84-year-old lady recalls the years spent alongside the strong man of the Kremlin .
And already, at the time, she had seen clearly in her game.
“The arguments he gives to destroy Ukraine, he has held them since he came to power,” she drops. But his anger towards Ukraine increased tenfold after 2014, when the Maidan uprising led to the overthrow of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych, whom the streets blamed for refusing to sign an agreement with the EU, judges Mme Vike-Freiberga.
She sees in the Russian invasion launched on February 24 a total and ruthless revenge against the Ukrainian people.
“He punishes them not only with an invasion and a seizure of territory: he massacres the civilians and he reduces the cities to ruin. And that is a criminal act, ”denounces the ex-president, who is currently working on her memoirs.
It is not so much a war against the Ukrainian army as a war against the civilian population, which we seem to want to exterminate.
Vaira Vike-Freiberga, former President of Latvia
Since Vladimir Putin sounded the charge, “he is doing what George Orwell described as the situation in a totalitarian country in his novel 1984taking on the one hand Nazi Germany, and on the other hand the Stalinist Soviet Union, as examples”, and by becoming the emulator of these two dreadful dictators of the XXand century: Hitler, by his way of annexing territories, and Stalin, for the lies and the threats of a purge”, she gets carried away.
“The foam comes out of his mouth”
The former KGB agent has also been trying, and for years, to rehabilitate the Stalinist heritage in the Russian Federation, believes Mr.me Vike-Freiberga.
Because he never digested the fall of the USSR, as evidenced in particular by this video of the documentary Citizen Kand his “narcissism”, coupled with a “desire to be feared like a gangster”, gives him the impetus to want to restore Russia to greatness, she argues.
« Je pense qu’il a toujours aujourd’hui en tête qu’il va reconstruire l’Empire [soviétique] as much as possible, and also, that he wants to go down in history as a second Peter the Great, like a second Catherine the Great, without a petticoat”, explains in impeccable French the holder of a doctorate in psychology from McGill University.
Vladimir Putin’s imperialist tendencies characterized his relations with the Baltic States – Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania – as they sought to free themselves once and for all from the Soviet heritage.
Having become independent in 1991, the three small countries nevertheless joined the select clubs of the EU and NATO in 2004.
I worked quite hard on the diplomatic floors, and I think I did it quite successfully, in the end.
Vaira Vike-Freiberga, former President of Latvia
And this, although she made an enemy – Russian – in passing.
In any case, this is what his counterpart from Finland, former President Tarja Halonen, told him.
“She saw Putin regularly, sometimes visited him in Sochi in the summer. She said to me: “But Vaira, what did you do to that guy? When I mention your name, the foam comes out of his mouth, ”says Mme Vike-Freiberga, struggling to suppress a smile.
NATO, Chirac and the calf’s head
Not only were Latvia and its two neighbors admitted to NATO, but two years later, in 2006, the summit of the political and military alliance was held in Riga, a few hours’ drive from border with Russia.
“In the nose and beard of the bear next door”, welcomes the former president.
According to him, the Russian leader had tried to sabotage the meeting.
“Putin had tried to take advantage of the fact that it was the birthday [du président de la République française] Jacques Chirac to make him absent from this summit in order to celebrate it, in Moscow or in Paris. I managed to thwart his plans. I said to Chirac: “We will offer you a calf’s head if you want, even if the European Union is against it [l’abat était alors interdit], but you will come to Riga.” And he came,” says Vaira Vike-Freiberga.
The Baltic countries, which together have around six million inhabitants, have thus formed NATO’s eastern front since 2004. In the wake of the Russian invasion, some of their leaders, including those of Lithuania, have publicly expressed their fear of being the next to find themselves in the sights of the Kremlin.
“I don’t think that’s happening,” said the former Latvian president. I think Mr. Putin has too much to do. He has his work cut out for him. »
He’ll attack Moldova instead, and possibly Georgia – they’re not NATO members, poor people.
Vaira Vike-Freiberga, former President of Latvia
“I am ashamed of the West”
In the meantime, Russia continues to shell Ukraine.
And the West is not doing enough, laments Mme Vike-Freiberga.
“Everyone claims that we fear a nuclear war and that is why we cannot help them. I look at what is happening in Ukraine, and I am ashamed. I’m ashamed of the West,” she drops.
“Putin is always going to have nuclear weapons. China has it too. Other countries have them. If we start to [craindre] a nuclear war every time someone does something wrong, the world will become unlivable. Because a man like Putin, there is nothing to stop him,” she laments.