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Baltic Takes (formerly badbaltictakes)

@badbaltictakes.bsky.social
1.8K followers 8 following 257 posts

“Baltic Takes skewers the lazy prejudices of the foreign commentariat and serves them up sizzling.” - Edward Lucas

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Baltic Takes (formerly badbaltictakes) @baltictakes.com · 30/09/2026
Countries usually like to keep quiet about espionage cases. Sometimes that helps gather more counter-intelligence without revealing methods. Often though, it can just be about saving face and keeping relations uncomplicated. Those days are over: www.baltictakes.com/estonia-just...
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Baltic Takes (formerly badbaltictakes) @baltictakes.com · 29/09/2026
Also made a request to the Latvians to serve us all the flavours of Kārums they’ve been hiding from us. They did not disappoint. In return, Estonians in attendance pledged to raise hell if anyone ever messed with what makes Kārums so delicious and so Latvian. #notasponsoredpost
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Baltic Takes (formerly badbaltictakes) @baltictakes.com · 29/09/2026
Estonia’s Internal Security Service (KAPO) has officially attributed an arson attack against a defence company to Russia. “Estonia remains a safe and secure country, and we are committed to doing everything necessary to keep it that way.”
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Baltic Takes (formerly badbaltictakes) @baltictakes.com · 27/09/2026
‘Golden arches theory’ is still not aging well, as this McDonalds warehouse burns in Ukraine after a Russian attack. Let’s talk about this. Thomas Friedman came up with the Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention in the 90s, arguing that countries with McDonalds don’t fight each other. 🧵..
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Baltic Takes (formerly badbaltictakes) @baltictakes.com · 26/09/2026
The CIA revised down its assessment of Russia’s threat to NATO, reports Michaeld Weiss on The Bulwark. Despite a lot of “clickbait bullshit” this week, the CIA is aligned with European intelligence agencies, including in the Baltics.
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Baltic Takes (formerly badbaltictakes) @baltictakes.com · 25/09/2026
That Danish intelligence report is broadly in line with what the Baltics are saying. The threat assessment is unchanged here. Leipzig shows how all of Europe is threatened by Russia - and all of Europe could actually learn more from the Baltics. Full story: www.badbaltic.com/listen-to-th...
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Baltic Takes (formerly badbaltictakes) @baltictakes.com · 24/09/2026
When you’re so anti-imperialist that you think only Westerners have agency. Greetings from the Baltic countries, by the way. Do us next. In that same period, the Baltics achieved some of the highest levels of human freedoms and fastest growth in the world.
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Baltic Takes (formerly badbaltictakes) @baltictakes.com · 23/09/2026
John Mearsheimer is hailed as an intellectual titan by both ends of the political spectrum. Tucker Carlson called him “an oracle” who is “universally respected” for being a smart authority on Russia. His recent visit to Russia seems to raise some doubt about that: www.badbaltic.com/acclaimed-ru...
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Baltic Takes (formerly badbaltictakes) @baltictakes.com · 22/09/2026
Hasan Piker has broken ranks with John Mearsheimer following his visit to Russia, saying that the realist scholar is too sympathetic to Russia and too overconfident about its situation. Unrealistic, you might say.
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Baltic Takes (formerly badbaltictakes) @baltictakes.com · 19/09/2026
The world’s wrongest man, John Mearsheimer, says he was effectively penniless during his recent visit to Russia because the “Russia expert” didn’t know his US credit card wouldn’t work there.
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Baltic Takes (formerly badbaltictakes) @baltictakes.com · 17/09/2026
The flags of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania were first raised at the UN 35 years ago today. We could finally get back to helping build a better rules-based world for all sovereign nations.
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Baltic Takes (formerly badbaltictakes) @baltictakes.com · 17/09/2026
Sean Thomas has previously been recognised for bad writing.
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Baltic Takes (formerly badbaltictakes) @baltictakes.com · 17/09/2026
Sean Thomas is a journalist and author from the extraordinary riverside city of London, basically an Italian Imperial Warsaw, now stranded in England. It makes one mourn for what Italy, and Europe, might have been, absent the barbarian invasions.
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Baltic Takes (formerly badbaltictakes) @baltictakes.com · 15/09/2026
The Baltic countries warned the world what Russia is. They were exactly right.
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Baltic Takes (formerly badbaltictakes) @baltictakes.com · 15/09/2026
As if “hybrid” wasn’t bad enough, we also keep hearing media reports about “stray” drones entering the Baltics. Were the drones that Russia deployed in Leipzig also stray?
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Baltic Takes (formerly badbaltictakes) @baltictakes.com · 14/09/2026
Lithuania’s most pro-Kremlin politician, Eduardas Vaitkus, has had to abandon his campaign to get a seat in Parliament. Candidates needed at least 1,000 nominations from residents to run. According to the Central Electoral Commission, Vaitkus recorded just 25 electronic nominations.
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Baltic Takes (formerly badbaltictakes) @baltictakes.com · 14/09/2026
“Look at these images through our eyes,” Yastremska said tagging the Women’s Tennis Association and the International Tennis Federation. “This is the true meaning of your ‘neutrality’.”
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Baltic Takes (formerly badbaltictakes) @baltictakes.com · 14/09/2026
Yastremska reached a Grand Slam semifinal and No. 21 in the world, defeating many of the world’s top players along the way. Odobasic has managed to compete in some age-group Masters tennis.
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Baltic Takes (formerly badbaltictakes) @baltictakes.com · 14/09/2026
A Serbian tennis coach who celebrated a russian missile strike on the home of a Ukrainian tennis star has just been suspended. Vladimir Odobasic wrote “Bravo Rusija,” on a post by Dayana Yastremska showing the destruction to her apartment block by a Russian Kalibr cruise missile on Friday.
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Baltic Takes (formerly badbaltictakes) @baltictakes.com · 13/09/2026
He wears some great shirts too.
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Baltic Takes (formerly badbaltictakes) @baltictakes.com · 13/09/2026
Congratulations, @glandsbergis.bsky.social, on your French state honour. Former Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis has some of the sharpest takes that all Europeans need to hear. France has now awarded him with the Knight's Cross of the French Legion of Honour.
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Baltic Takes (formerly badbaltictakes) @baltictakes.com · 09/09/2026
A Chinese official attempted some of that Wolf Warrior Diplomacy ™ shit. It did not go well. Philippines' Defence Minister Gilberto Teodoro was speaking up for smaller nations and international law at a forum in Korea when he was handed a note from a Chinese official, meant as intimidating.
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Baltic Takes (formerly badbaltictakes) @baltictakes.com · 08/09/2026
Within days, as you see in this interview, he was expertly explaining why Putin will nuke us all because that’s just the kind of person Putin’s always been. 🤷‍♂️
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Baltic Takes (formerly badbaltictakes) @baltictakes.com · 08/09/2026
The most obvious example was at the start of the full scale war when he first infamously mocked anyone concerned about it, calling the prospect “outlandish QAnon-style delirium”, which “only the imagination of the DC blob could produce”.
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Baltic Takes (formerly badbaltictakes) @baltictakes.com · 08/09/2026
The thing about “Russia experts” like Ragozin is that their analysis makes zero sense when you step back from the news cycle. They rapidly shift their tone, messaging, and underlying logic to whatever best amplifies Kremlin narratives to Western audiences at the edge of the current Overton window.
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Baltic Takes (formerly badbaltictakes) @baltictakes.com · 07/09/2026
We just published an exclusive new investigation into Dan Boeckner, guitarist for Arcade Fire and Wolf Parade, who continues to spread hateful bigotry against Baltic and Ukrainian peoples.
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Baltic Takes (formerly badbaltictakes) @baltictakes.com · 03/09/2026
Poor Colin, just waking up from his four year coma.
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Baltic Takes (formerly badbaltictakes) @baltictakes.com · 02/09/2026
Estonia has elected Ülle Madise as the Republic’s next President. Estonia continues to stand with Ukraine, says Madise, and any peace settlement must be just for Ukrainians, not reward aggression, and must not be negotiated over Ukraine’s head.
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Baltic Takes (formerly badbaltictakes) @baltictakes.com · 02/09/2026
They have lost their damn minds. Sorry for the delay, but few people in the Baltics had time to read this nonsense because we were too busy celebrating the return to schools and focused on our own future in our own Republics.
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Baltic Takes (formerly badbaltictakes) @baltictakes.com · 31/08/2026
32 years ago today, the last Soviet/Russian occupation forces in the Baltics were made to gather up their jackets and move it to the exits, never to return.
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Baltic Takes (formerly badbaltictakes) @baltictakes.com · 30/08/2026
Deception and disruption are hardly new concepts in warfare. If that’s “hybrid war” then Sun Tzu’s Art of War, written in the 5th century BC, is basically just a hybrid war manual. And yet the term has shot up in popularity in the last year or two, especially among "concerned" European officials.
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Baltic Takes (formerly badbaltictakes) @baltictakes.com · 29/08/2026
I like this Bluesky place. Thank you @keirgiles.bsky.social for 10xing my followers today & thank you all for a warm welcome. Tonight we say farewell to summer with the night of ancient bonfires here around the Baltic coast. Challenging times ahead this winter and beyond, so let’s stay connected!
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Baltic Takes (formerly badbaltictakes) @baltictakes.com · 29/08/2026
“Hybrid schmybrid.” says the Estonian spy chief in this rare interview. We should abandon euphemisms, according to Kaupo Rosin, and call Russia’s sabotage and subversion by its proper name of “state-sponsored terrorism”.
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Baltic Takes (formerly badbaltictakes) @baltictakes.com · 28/08/2026
What a week. Full story: www.badbaltic.com/baltics-warn...
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Baltic Takes (formerly badbaltictakes) @baltictakes.com · 27/08/2026
This would have immediately disqualified Tate from Estonian citizenship anyway. He’s sitting BELOW the stones, far out of reach from the bucket, all while posing as a tough guy in a mild sauna. No leil (sauna steam), no friends/family. GTFO of our holy place.
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Baltic Takes (formerly badbaltictakes) @baltictakes.com · 26/08/2026
Lawyers for Andrew Tate have had to admit in court that he is not a citizen of Estonia as he previously claimed. Much of his wealth and status is fabricated, they said while arguing he is not a flight risk if released on bail. That included his claims to seven passports.
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Baltic Takes (formerly badbaltictakes) @baltictakes.com · 26/08/2026
Even those of you who justify the pact should first say thank you to them that you can even talk about it. But also reflect on why you needed the people of the Baltic countries to expose the pact before you suddenly remembered that it was a great idea all along.
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Baltic Takes (formerly badbaltictakes) @baltictakes.com · 26/08/2026
The fact is, we can talk about the Nazi-Soviet Pact today thanks to brave men and women who endured Soviet persecution to tell the world about it, most notably here in the Baltic countries.
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Baltic Takes (formerly badbaltictakes) @baltictakes.com · 26/08/2026
If the Nazi-Soviet Pact was just 4D chess then why did no one involved ever take credit? Why did Stalin and Molotov deny to their deaths that they had agreed to carve up Europe, the key part of the agreement? Why did the Soviet Union brutally censor discussion of the topic for half a century?
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Baltic Takes (formerly badbaltictakes) @baltictakes.com · 25/08/2026
They really don't want you to call it the Nazi-Soviet Pact. Notice that Russia always refers to Nazi Germany EXCEPT when justifying its pact to carve up Europe with them, which is the only time they always refer to Nazi Germany as only Germany.
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Baltic Takes (formerly badbaltictakes) @baltictakes.com · 23/08/2026
Because if you’re preparing for an impending attack then obviously the first thing you’d do is help your enemy expand their territory and then provide substantial economic, logistical, and material support to aid their war machine, while aligning your propaganda and purging critics of your enemy.
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Baltic Takes (formerly badbaltictakes) @baltictakes.com · 23/08/2026
It was only after pressure from the Baltic countries that the Soviet Union acknowledged the Pact as criminal collusion and disclosed its secret protocol.
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Baltic Takes (formerly badbaltictakes) @baltictakes.com · 23/08/2026
Vyacheslav Molotov must have been the most modest man who ever lived. Because we keep hearing from tankies that the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was all just a brilliant 4D chess move. Yet Molotov never took credit for it! He denied the key part, its secret protocol to divide Europe, his whole life.
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Baltic Takes (formerly badbaltictakes) @baltictakes.com · 23/08/2026
Here’s the final part of the report, adding even more historical context after returning to the studio.
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Baltic Takes (formerly badbaltictakes) @baltictakes.com · 23/08/2026
So the Baltic Chain was indeed spectacular, visually and logistically, and incredibly brave.
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Baltic Takes (formerly badbaltictakes) @baltictakes.com · 23/08/2026
The continued occupation of the Baltic countries half a century later meant that war wasn’t over. The Pact had to be fully annulled.
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Baltic Takes (formerly badbaltictakes) @baltictakes.com · 23/08/2026
The Baltic Chain protesters were marking a half century since the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the criminal collusion between the Nazis and Soviets to divide up other people’s nations and pave the way for the aggression that sparked the Second World War.
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Baltic Takes (formerly badbaltictakes) @baltictakes.com · 23/08/2026
The Baltic Chain protestors achieved something spectacular, despite no mobile phones, no social media, and a brutal regime determined to stop them. They formed the world’s longest unbroken human chain of nearly 700km across our three then occupied nations.
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Baltic Takes (formerly badbaltictakes) @baltictakes.com · 23/08/2026
Here’s how the world reacted to the Baltic Chain on this day in 1989, as two million turned their backs on Moscow to demand freedom. The report is centred on the protestors, their perspectives, and the historical context without the imperial lens. A lot of journalists today can learn from this.
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Baltic Takes (formerly badbaltictakes) @baltictakes.com · 21/08/2026
Estonians have an expression: Kui juba, siis juba. Basically: If we’re gonna do something, let’s really do it. So here’s BadBaltic.com What started as a snarky Twitter (and now Bluesky) account is now also an online magazine, Bad Baltic.
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