Explaining the Latvian-Lithuanian relationships

Day 3,127, 13:08 Published in Latvia Latvia by Tutenis


One of the hottest topics for the past almost a week now has been the Latvian-Lithuanian war. Since Latvia is member of Pacifica while Lithuania is member of Orion, and both alliances generally share MPPs with each other and Asteria, it`s quite obvious that there are some tensions because of this as well as pressure to stop this war as soon as possible.

It`s not surprising that the general conception from most countries is that Latvia out of nowhere attacked it`s ally. Lithuanian goverment also tries to play this card that “ we like Latvia”, “we have good relationships with them” etc. Outsiders who are not familiar with the situation mostly look through the “Baltics/former ABC = friends” point of view, which, at the moment, couldn`t be further from the truth.

For more than two years our relationships has been a bumpy road, to say the least. There has been more downs than ups, and there has been more bad than positive. To try to make sence of this for all of the outsiders who are not familiar with LV-LT relationships, I`ve decided to tell the tales of Latvian and Lithuanian relationships dating back from early 2014 up until now. Grab some popcorn, prepare some coffee, have a smoke before you start to read it, because this article is a long one.

Chapter one: The beginning

In retrospect, I guess it all started after the collapse of TWO, when our president at the time Soulcraft decided to start war with Belarus. Belarus historically has been a country who Latvia has had war with, mostly due to them having the resource bonuses we needed. Simply put – Latvia views Belarus as enemy, while Lithuania always try to be friendly with them, even during the times they are in war with them.

So when the war with Belarus started, Lithuania was quick to issue Neutrality policy regarding this war, which in reality of course was Lithuanians fighting for Belarus, their vMoFAs and other goverment members shouting to fight for Belarus and 0 Lithuanian soldiers on Latvian side. It basically was far from neutrality, but it was understandable since neither we or Belarus had chose to which side – proSirius or proAsteria – we will go.

With Latvia joining the proSirius ranks and Belarus being one of the founders of LETO the issue should be over, right? But no, Lithuania still was asking Sirius countries not to sign MPPs with us.

On March 2014 I became the CP of Latvia, as a three month old player with no attachment to any country except Lithuania, because I had good relationships with EmuSV while she was serving one term as MoFA in Latvia in Soulcrafts goverment. I was a blank page – my knowledge about the game mechanics came from me updating new player tutorials, and my knowledge of foreign affairs came from translating EmuSVs MoFA articles from English to Latvian. Considering that I was a one man goverment, it was basically like indirect relationship reset – I had no knowledge of things that happened in past, my only knowledge was present.

Without any surprises, any requests for help in our war against Belarus resulted in the middle finger waved towards us, which is no suprise, but what surprised me was NAP agreement between Lithuania and Sweden which basically gave the green light for Sweden to come and wipes us together with Belarus. It was basically Mixliarder who saved us by talking Poland into wiping Finland(route from Poland to Finland is via Sweden) to help Estonia close the war. So the situation wasn`t pretty at the time.

Chapter two: The good times

It was Sweden being wiped and Lithuania finishing in bottom TOP3 in one of national shield copetitions with gold prizes, that our interests started to get aligned again. The talks of Lithuania setting NE on Belarus still always ended with a Lithuanian congressman starting a NE law on Latvia, but I guess it was them not having any other options than attacking BY that made them agree to do that. Even though their war was more of a TW, it made us talk and it brought us a little closer.

It was when Colombia AirStriked Latvia that our friendship saw some glimpses of one that we had before. It was beautiful. I still remember those all-nighters - Skype conversations, in-game group PMs, IRC chats etc. Even a known hater of Latvia like Adolf.H was involved in the search for solutions to solve this situation. Colombia had prepared well currency wise, and with the help of time zones(they started the battles when it was 2:00 in Latvia) it was basically impossible for us to deal with them one on one, so Lithuania decided to NE them, for helping purposes or to just have some fun, who cares, but the campaign brought us so much closer. But after this campaign, our interests and goals went apart again – we continued our battle with Belarus while Lithuania took on a challenge to try to wipe Sweden. Again, both countries busy with their own stuff with occasional support for each other when the battle schedule allows it.

Chapther three: When the paths split

On June 2014 proSirius countries were working towards creating a proSirius alliance, which later materialized as Root aliance. I was not a fan of the idea, and was always against it, since there was no benefit or rational reason for ~10 small small countries with various major problems to form an alliance, especially because there were many who didn`t want to be a part of alliance like that, so the already fragmented proSirius would only get even messier. It was also the time when the question will Sirius even survive until July or August was more than fair.

Then an opportunity came around on July – a chance to apply for Pacifica alliance. At the time it consisted from Russia and USA, two of the strongrest proSirius countries. The decision had to be made, and in this case, it wasn`t a hard one.

On one hand we had opportunity to form “ABC and friends”, where Latvia and Lithuania held more than 50% of the total damage of the alliance in which there were other members who we had no relationships with, and on the other hand we had a chance to join an alliance, where we were the nominally weakest ones, plus we were sort of regional, since Russia shares borders with both Latvia and USA. On top of that, Pacifica offered us something that at the time was very important to us since we were constantly fighting two wars with Belarus and Sweden – neutrality with Asgard.

It was a unanimous decision among our players to apply for Pacifica, especially because our communication with Lithuania and Estonia was done in private conversations and there was no need to form an alliance. I assured that we are fully commited to keep strengthening our relationships and are always ready to help them.

But then gliookas II happened. After a poorly executed AirStrike on Norway(they attacked a region with 14billion damage shield, which at time would be extremely challenging to overcome even for biggest countries), Lithuania made a sudden decision to drop our MPP, even though we were their biggest supporters in that campaign. Also rumors started to surface that Lithuania is plotting an attack on Latvia, which some Lithuanian players even confirmed stating that the only thing that keeps them from doing that is our common MPP list. Obviously with no communication and constant threat of being under attack, it`s safe to say that relationships take quite a hit. As they did, every passing day we just kept getting further and further apart.

Chapter four: The letdown

After the extremely bad month a player named GintV became the president of Lithuania. I didn`t know him, but since he was from Lithuanian Shadows it was a nice change, since all the shaking of relationships came from the other major MU in Lithuania – TheUnit.

He was a major upgrade in terms of keeping our relationships alive – first thing he did was renew MPP with Latvia and we agreed to try to re-establish some cooperation between our countries. Sadly, since we shared no real common interests and we were busy keeping Belarus wiped while Lithuania was fighting Sweden, we had no real chance to cooperate.

On October 2014 iPSiArt, by far the biggest Lithuanian tank and arguably the most influental player in their community was running for presidency. Since we had established good relationships during the time of gliookas II destructive month. We were talking about common AirStrike or any type of campaign to reestablish that Latvia and Lithuania is working together, that we share common interests and act together. I still believe that at that time together we had the damage and currency to make wonders happen.

Sadly, it turned out to be the exact opposite. Rumors started to surface that Romania is preparing to attack Latvia. Lithuanians informed us about that, since probably they got the info first hand from Belarus. Since Belarus had won some RWs but Lithuania had taken Homelskaya and Vitsebskaya regions, the plan was following(map for visualization):



I wanted to keep Vitsebskaya because otherwise we would lose 40-60% food bonus, while Homelskaya would be obviously let free. Lithuania insisted that both Vitsebskaya and Homelskaya should be free. The situation was a mess – one was talking apples, the other oranges. Knowing that if Romania wanted to wipe us, there was no way to escape it(and that Belarus would gladly help the cause by giving up battles), I was insisting that Vitsebskaya should be let free and Homelskaya only after our NE had closed, so that there is the one region buffer zone, because having two wouldn`t make any difference, only that we lost our food bonus. The conversations turned quite heated, because a common ground couldn`t be found. Then Wild Owl told me that we are about to get wiped by Romania, so any of the plans didn`t really make any difference anymore. What we didn`t know was that Hungary would wipe Lithuania to ensure Romania doesn`t gain border with Poland.

Chapter five: It`s starting to get ugly

Then the mastermind arrived – dimention. Using moment when Russian goverment signed MPP with Serbia while still being somewhat neutral or proSirius, he was quick to use the momentum of hate towards Russia and declared war on them. Being in extremely tough lose-lose situation – either fighting against our friends(yes, we still considered them friends) in Lithuania, or fighting against our friends in Russia – I decided that the best option would be stating our neutrality on this issue, which in retrospect, I feel ashamed of considering the state of our then relationships with Lithuania and considering how supportive Russia had been for us. Latvian players did consider that, and most of them fought against Lithuania, even though for the most obvious reason such as helping your ally defend its core region.

Lithuania was enraged – how could this be? Latvian players fighting via MPP against us to help their ally defend their cores!!??!! BACKSTABBERS!! It didn`t take long for things to get serious.

Around that time we were going to our first AirStrike in a long, long time, if I`m not mistaking, our second ever. It was end of December or early January if I`m not mistaking, when a day before our AirStrike on Cuba we were given an extremely nice surprise in form of many Lithuanians tanking against us in a Belarussian RW, led by the mastermind dimention himself.

The RW was suppressed, but the hit in our relationships was not. When we flew to Cuba, there were still many Lithuanians fighting against us either for Cuba for Belarus in RWs.

Chapter six: The uforgivable

Not longly after the first Resource War tournament started. We went all in, many Airstrikes, NEs, Declarations of war. Our MPP list was literally raped – the only country which we had with MPP with was Russia, which ironically prevented us from declaring war on them.

It didn`t take long for Lithuania to suddendly RW Vitebskaya and cut our access to food bonuses. In a Skype conversation with iPSiArt he presented me his plan to make Germark(Germany-Denmark) type union with Belarus. Since Lithuania had become friendly with Sweden, his further statement that Lithuania can`t live in circle of friends was a clear message that they have intentions to have war with Latvia.

And it was backed up by their actions. They talked Chile, Croatia, UK and many others to replace our MPP with Belarus, our enemy number one at the time. The only countries who stayed loyal to us were Turkey and Bulgaria, to who we had to say goodbye, because Lithuania got us kicked out from proSirius to make place for Belarus. And the “circle of friends” comment along with “we would attack you if there were no common MPPs” I think makes their intentions clear. If that is not enough, the Mr. dimention Einstein himself asked Wild Owl if USA would support Lithuania in war against Latvia.

What cancelled the war was that Mr. Dimention Einstein found out a new relativity theory. It turns out that when Poland is wiping you, setting the resources they need doesn`t equal you having the resource yourself. It turns out that permawipe=number of your regions-number of your regions Poland needs for food bonuses. A stunning peace of research that nobody except dimention could find out.

But it doesn`t end here. Soon after the Resource wars a thing called #CubaLibre happened. It was started by the Cuban CP who ironically was Lithuanian(though it doesn`t really hold any relevance in this case). You can only guess who tanked their ass of to kick us out of there. Lithuanians did billions and billions of damage there, which, to be quite honest, was the dot on the i for us.

It was also the time when Latvians and Lithuanians really liked to visit each others media. There were so many high profile Lithuanians coming to our media to leave threat comments – we will attack you as soon as we get free, just wait, we will not be wiped forever etc. Even my friend iPSiArt, who was actively searching for Latvian male genetalia in the comments of our articles or in Friends feed told it quite openly that there is no other way than to have a war.

Chapter seven: When?

Since it was pretty obvious that the [bleep] is going down, there was no need to be nice anymore. Since Poland had wiped Lithuanian cores and the only region they had was Minskaya – a Belarussian region. They messed up their relationships with South Africa because of keeping their TW active too long after the resource wars, so when there was RW in Minskaya, you know who was there.

When I saw a totally irrelevant Latvian MU setting a small CO against Lithuania in that RW, I knew I would get ton of hate mail anyway, so I decided to go for it. Little bit of CO, little bit of few Latvian tanks fighting, little bit of South Africans coming to say hi, and poof, Lithuania has no congress for the upcoming year.

Even before this Latvians and Lithuanians enjoyed to lay some damage against each other, prefferably in meaningful battles. So now it really had gotten out of hand. I remember reiceving almost like a daily reports from Lithuanians where they showed where Latvians fought against them, although I don`t think there was a round in any of our battle where at least one of our braļukas wasn`t in TOP5 against us.

Chapter eight: Until now

The trend of Lithuanians fighting against us continued until they needed leverage in NAP talks with Poland. And the only way for them to gain some leverage was to become proAsteria. Since the last time when we sat at one table a brawl started that got one of us kicked out, I personally messaged every Asterian goverment to not sign MPP with Lithuania, I also talked with Asteria HQ about this. But the trend continued, and the funny thing is that they still fought against the countries they signed MPPs with. Everyone was informed that the relationships between Latvia and Lithuania are extremely bad, and that the very moment they become free there is a huge chance of one country attacking the other.

People tend to not listen if the problem is not aching yet

Even though there has been some bright spots, such as TOP Latvian players wearing the of Lithuanian Shadows to mourn the tragic passing of ZygaLTU, or iPSiArt reportedly organizing Lithuanians to fight for Latvia during our AirStrike against Bulgaria, it still doesn`t change the fact that both communities hate each other. Our players didn`t wear those avatars because they like Lithuania, they mourned the passign of a political legend in our region, a player who we knew and once were friends, those Lithuanians also didn`t fight for Latvia because they like us, they did that because iPSiArt told them to do that.

I dare you to make a quick survey – send 10 Latvians and 10 Lithuanians 2 questions:

Do you hate Latvia(or Lithuania)?
Do you want a war with them?

I can guarantee you that 100%(95% if you sent a PM to Raima) of the players you sent the questions to will send you a PM with 2 YESes.

Lets make another one!

Go and find a comment in either Latvian or Lithuanian media that is against this war. All players are for it(of course, except Raima).

This war was coming and it was a matter of when, not if

Sadly, sometimes politicians tend to get removed from the real situation and opinions of their communities, but this time they did not. So is Latvia attacking its ally, or is it attacking its enemy? Ask the ones, ask the others, and then tell me. These relationships has been bad for a long time, and acting surprised or trying to pressure both sides to close the war will not change that. The fact of a matter is that two players will not change the opinion of the 800 others.

I hope after reading this you might have more insight on what Latvian and Lithuanian relationships looks like, what are the reasons for that, and maybe you get why this war is going on.

Best regards,
Skazis