and this history shows that we ve been arguing this for many, many years weakness provokes russia. russia made a miscalculation that ukraine was easy, the ukraine was weak, and that provoked their military aggression, their war. the way to counter russia is through strength. we ve learned this from many, many years of experience the russians only respond to strength, they only respect strength. so we must, as democracies, as europe, as a whole, and as nato, not be afraid to be strong. so why haven t so many of your partners in the eu and nato not learned the same lesson that you ve just described to me? france and germany, for example, italy, as well, spent less than 0.1% of their gdp on assistance to ukraine. you ve spent close to 0.8 0.9%, you and estonia, right up there france, germany, italy, nowhere. we ve donated, what is today,
more than a third of our military budget. it s extraordinary. and we re continuing. you ve just sent howitzers, you ve just sent military helicopters. yes. my point is exactly that you are doing so much. partners like germany, france and italy, by the same standard, doing so little. well, someone has to lead in any situation. one can also lead by example, if not by sheer size of the economy. we in the baltics, we are leading by example. great britain is very active in this, the united states is very active, canada other nato partners are ramping up. i would want them to ramp up more. let s turn this ramp this up a little bit and just ask how sustainable your commitment is. you are overseeing a very fragile economy right now. you ve barely recovered in terms of gdp from the financial crash of 2008. you ve since had covid, your inflation rate, according to last month s figures, is running at around
at the baltic countries as part of the nato alliance. we have an enhanced forward presence of nato here for the past five years. and our nato partners, just as we are ramping up our defense spending and our capabilities, our nato partners are doing the same. so we are all interdependent upon one another, but we are investing, you know, pound for pound, the equivalent or more than most of our. but there s a bind here, isn t there? because the more you invite nato s forces to expand their presence here and i believe that of all three baltic states, you now will have the largest deployment of nato forces on your territory the more you do that, the more the russians talk of provocation. 2ajune, sergei lavrov, foreign minister, said, the eu and nato s are gathering a coalition for war with the russian federation. we are going to look at this very carefully. does that russian language give you pause? look, russia is waging a war in ukraine. nato is not waging a war against anyone. the
of humanitarian aid, blankets, you name it, that has been going on. people donating cash and not very wealthy people, ordinary people. so we ve had a massive mobilisation of society, because we here in latvia very well understand that the ukrainians are, in a sense, fighting our war. they are fighting against russian imperialism. right now, it happens to be in ukraine, it could just as well be anywhere else around russia s periphery. and that s precisely why i use the word fear maybe fear and insecurity. because i m mindful thatjust a month before the invasion, you said that, in your opinion, a war between russia and nato s was, quote, unthinkable . have you had second thoughts about that? i still don t see that happening right now. remember, latvia we have always been next to russia. we have been countering their military aggression in one form or another