The head of Ukraine's state TV company has been attacked and forced to resign by at least three MPs from the far-right Svoboda party.

CRIMEA has fallen. Ukraine is teetering on the brink. Are Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania the next dominoes to fall?

Russian officials last night expressed ‘outrage’ at Estonia’s treatment of its large ethnic Russian minority.

It’s a familiar move: The Kremlin defended its seizing of the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine a month ago with the pretext it has the right to protect Russian-speakers outside its borders.

It’s by no means the first time this excuse has been heard.

Nearly 80 years ago, Germany began its annexation of nearby states with the widely broadcast notion of protecting marginalised German-language speakers.

Russia is now adopting the same line towards ex-members of the Soviet Union.

A Moscow diplomat told a United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva last night that the language policy in the Baltic state of Estonia was comparable to what had caused it to move on Crimea — a move to prevent the use of the Russian tongue.

The tactic is as fearful as it is familiar.

In the 1930s Adolf Hitler asserted the desire to ‘unite and protect’ all German speaking peoples.

For much of the decade, the West turned a blind eye.

Then, as now, the problem was not all of these states wanted to be united — or protected.

As the Crimea crisis continues to flare, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — which, like Ukraine, were all parts of the old Soviet Union — have expressed growing apprehension over Moscow’s intentions.

Overnight, a Moscow diplomat told the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva: “Language should not be used to segregate and isolate groups … (Russia is) “concerned by steps taken in this regard in Estonia as well as in Ukraine.”

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This has done nothing to ease Estonia’s anxiety.

Nor has unusually strong words from the United States Vice President Joe Biden while visiting Lithuania overnight: “We’re in this with you, together,’’ Biden said…. “Russia cannot escape the fact that the world is changing and rejecting outright their behaviour.”

He went so far as to add: “Under Article 5 of the NATO Treaty, we will respond, we will respond to any aggression against a NATO ally.

WILL WE HEAR THE ‘W’ WORD?

The tough talk doesn’t end with Biden.

Even as Ukraine surrenders any hope of retaining control of Crimea through ordering withdrawal of all its remaining troops, NATO has ramped up the rhetoric.

“Our major concern right now is whether he (President Vladimir Putin) will go beyond Crimea, whether Russia will intervene in the eastern parts (of Ukraine),’’ NATO’s Secretary-general Anders Fogh Rasmussen said this morning.

Denouncing the moves in the Crimean peninsula as “military aggression’’, Rasmussen said Russia’s actions were part of a long-running pattern across the region to block nations from forging ties with the West.

“If you look at all of this, you will see an overall Russian strategy,’’ he told an audience at the Brookings Institution think tank.

“It serves their long-term strategic interests to keep instability in that region which can be used, among other things, to prevent countries in that region seeking euro-Atlantic integration.

“That’s my main concern.’’

President Obama, however, appears to be playing the appeaser. In an interview with NBC News he reiterated that the US would not be taking military action in Ukraine against Russia.

“We are not going to get into a military excursion in Ukraine,” he said. “For us to engage Russia militarily would not be appropriate and would not be good for Ukraine, either”.

But the NATO chief said he expected alliance ministers to agree to bolstering assistance to Ukraine at an upcoming meeting but he did not specify what kind of aid might be approved.

Ukraine has offered a hint: It is saying it will soon hold “joint military exercises” with the United States and Britain.

US officials have said they are reviewing a request from Kiev for military support, including arms, ammunition and non-lethal equipment.

WAR OF WORDS HEATS UP

Renewed Russian threats over racial vilification are raising tensions in the Ukraine even higher.

Earlier this week a pro-Putin newspaper said the chance for “bloodshed almost like in Syria” was high in the east of Ukraine.

Ukraine has rejected the notion.

Its ambassador told the UN human rights council that it had found no credible evidence of mistreatment of its Russian minority

It retorted by asking for assurances against minority groups in Crimea, such as the Muslim Tartars and Ukrainian communities.

Russia’s rhetoric has revived talk of the Cold-War era “Domino theory”.

The reasoning went that as one country fell under communist influence or control, its neighbouring countries would soon follow.

Preventing this topple-down effect was the cause for the military intervention of the United States in Korea and Vietnam.

It was a theory born from the ashes of World War II, and the policies of appeasement that had led to it.

Given the lack of vigour in the West’s reaction to the invasion of Crimea, many of the smaller former Soviet Union states now feel powerless as Putin begins to invoke the propaganda of history, language and culture (all from his perspective) as ‘cause for concern’ over their affairs.

CULTURAL MELTING POTS

The history of Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are messy as the modern states have always been on the border of two worlds.

Two thousand years ago the region was the frontline between the Roman Empire and the ‘barbarian hordes’

Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have been fought over by the Danish, Swedes, Germans and Russians for centuries. In the medieval era, the Teutonic Knights — German warrior-monks — sought to claim the Baltic coast for Christianity and expel the heathen tribes. Estonia was seized by the USSR in 1940 and only regained its independence in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

In recent decades, all three Baltic-coast states have joined NATO and sought to join the European Union.

Ukraine is a slightly different story. In medieval times the region was a loose association of Poles, Lithuanians and Romanians who blended with scattered remnants of the Mongol and Tartar “Golden Horde”.

Russia was only added to the mix when it joined Ukrainian ‘freedom fighters’ to expel their ‘Polish overlords’ in 1795.

Now, Ukraine is made up of about 30 million Ukrainian speakers and 15 million Russian speakers. The main religion is Orthodox (15 million followers), with a sizeable chunk of Catholics (2.5 million).

Unlike its northern neighbours, it has until recently maintained close and friendly contact with its former Russian overlords.

But the recent overthrow of the corrupt Yanukovych government saw Russia lose the last vestiges of its Soviet Union-era influence over the strategic and beautiful region.

President Putin simply could not put up with that. Thus the Crimean ‘velvet invasion’.