Commentary: Not all Russians buy Putin’s warmongering
MOSCOW — In May 1993, Estonia’s first post-Soviet leader Lennart Meri — a wise man with bitter experience of life in the Soviet Union — told the visiting U.S. deputy secretary of state that Estonia urgently needed to join NATO. It was, he said, the only guarantee that Russia wouldn’t invade the Baltic state once a less Western-friendly and authoritarian Russian leader replaced then-President Boris Yeltsin.
Meanwhile, Yeltsin openly warned the U.S. that NATO’s expansion to the east would inevitably lead to an explosion in nationalist and
