I hear this a lot, but nobody can explain: why? What good are they to Russia? Ukraine is obvious to anyone who's studied history: as a buffer. What good are the Baltics to Russia, to justify the military expense of capturing them?
I'm sure that's untrue and it's been explained to you many times, but: because they're border states, just like Belarus and, yes, Ukraine. A "buffer" if you prefer.
The "Russian population" in Ukraine was enough to be used as a pretense for an attack by Putin, who believes a large Russian minority somehow makes the territory his. The ethnically Russian populations in Latvia and Estonia are, percentage-wise, larger than that of Ukraine.
Putin's an avowed fan of Alexandr Dugin, so you could look at his writings for some hints, but I'm not sure Putin draws the lines in precisely the same way. It helps to remember that Putin's also a psychopath.
