EU: A president has been impeached, a government toppled and several alleged Russian spies ousted in recent months, but the Baltic nations of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia have kept their eyes firmly fixed on the prize of a place in the European Union.
Since fighting free of the Soviet Union in 1991, the three countries and their combined 7.5 million people have effected a startling transformation, creating vigorous democracies and economic growth that easily outstrips that of most EU stalwarts.
There is a palpable confidence about the region, borne of increasing investment from Western Europe, a swift loosening of ties with old master Moscow, and a sense of imminent return to a rightful place in the continental family of democracies. The Baltic States are still resentful over their treatment in 1945, when the Allies abandoned them to Josef Stalin and almost 50 years of occupation, when tens of thousands were killed and local languages and customs suppressed.
Now fighter jets from NATO patrol the skies above its three new members, for whom EU membership will sink another nail into the coffin of the Cold War. But the Russian bear is still close by, and continues to growl at its former subjects.
Moscow took negotiations close to the wire this week over a crucial co-operation pact that regulates EU-Russia relations, after refusing to automatically extend its trade terms to the 10 new member-states, most of which are former Soviet satellites.
The deal was clinched on Tuesday, and will lower trade tariffs, raise Russian steel quotas, honour Moscow's existing contracts to supply nuclear fuel to new members' power plants, and abolish customs duties on cargo between Russia proper and Kaliningrad, a port on the Baltic that will be surrounded by the EU come Saturday.
The Kremlin's main remaining gripe with the Baltic States - and now with Brussels - is the treatment of Russian minorities in Latvia and Estonia.
More than 40 per cent of Latvia's 2.3 million people are Russian, and they make up a quarter of Estonia's 1.5 million residents. Moscow says both countries discriminate against Russians by making them pass language tests to get a passport, a policy that has left hundreds of thousands of people without citizenship rights.
Lithuania's smaller Russian community gets along better with the state, but the Kremlin still casts a baleful shadow.
President Rolandas Paksas was impeached this month after a scandal over his alleged links to the Russian mafia and security services, and Lithuania expelled three Russian diplomats in February.
Estonia sent two diplomats home to Moscow in March, and Latvia declared a Russian persona non-grate last week, for allegedly trying to obtain secrets about NATO.
The diplomatic turbulence has not knocked the Baltic States off their EU track, discouraged bold economic reform or rattled stable currencies. Even the collapse in February of Latvia's 10th government since 1991 failed to badly jolt the country, and it ushered in Europe's only Green Party prime minister.
Leaders and governing parties have come and gone in the Baltic, but democratic principles have bedded in and preparations for EU accession have not faltered.