Politically, Latvia is firmly anchored to the West through its membership of the European Union and NATO. Economically, however, the country still remains under significant Russian influence. The Kremlin has several economic instruments at its disposal which could be used to cause significant negative impact on Latvian economy. The key ones would include restricting imports of Latvian goods, banning future and liquidating existing Russian FDIs in Latvia, reducing volumes of Russian freight transit through Latvian ports, halting supplies of natural gas to Latvia, and withdrawing non-resident deposits controlled by Russia-related entities from the Latvian banking system.

The Ukrainian crisis has focused the attention of the international community and global mass media on the region. The annexation of Crimea and the possibility of several regions in eastern Ukraine seceding have been rightly seen as major changes to the post-Cold War geopolitical situation in Eastern Europe. At the same time these events may have an impact of potentially similar geopolitical magnitude over 1000 kilometres north of Kyiv, in Finland.   

The crisis in the eastern part of Ukraine created a complex and multi-faceted problem for the government. In the coming weeks, it will have to address a variety of different challenges across military, internal security, social, political and media-related dimensions. The complexity of the task is immense and the odds are clearly stacked against Kyiv, at least in the short term.

The crisis in Ukraine, which led to annexation of Crimea by Russia in March 2014, had an immediate impact on the strategic situation across the entire Black Sea region. Russia emerged as a clear beneficiary mostly at the expense of Ukraine. The new situation will now have repercussions for other regional actors, in particular Turkey and Romania, and will lead to the increased involvement of the United States. However, Washington will likely prefer to support Romania over Turkey in an attempt to avoid the creation of a potential Russo-Turkic geopolitical duopoly in the region.