Important Takeaways:

• NATO Must ‘Wake Up’ to Putin’s Trap, Russia’s Neighbor Warns
• Gathered at the Munich Security Conference in southern Germany this weekend, the mood among Western leaders was notably subdued. The elation of Ukraine’s survival and subsequent battlefield victories of 2022 are now distant in the rearview mirror. Ahead lies an open-ended bloody conflict, in which a Ukrainian victory—as set out by Kyiv—appears increasingly ambitious.
• Lativa, like its fellow Baltic neighbors, has been in the vanguard of pushing for greater aid for Ukraine and harsher measures on Russia. Latvia has donated more than 1 percent of its GDP to assist Ukraine’s defense, and Riga is also among the top NATO military spending in GDP terms.
• Latvia’s Prime Minister Evika Silina said “Such a regime as Putin’s regime, he is using our own values against us, our own tools against us, our own international treaties against us,” she said. “They know it’s our weakness.”
• “We have to remember that we are policy makers, we can change our rules, but still remain true to the same values. It is very important to remember that.”
• “We are the front runners, we are at the front line,” Silina said. Other NATO allies are warning that the alliance faces a resurgent Russian military threat within less than a decade, despite Moscow’s mauling in Ukraine.
• “I cannot say there is a three- or five-year timeline for the threat, but we understand,” Silina said to those warnings. “We see Ukraine winning. But yes, after this, Russia will again gain capabilities to attack someone else. And it could be five years, it could be three years, it depends which tools they will decide to use.”

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