The Baltic States and the neighboring Russian exclave of Kaliningrad are widely regarded as the most dangerous potential flashpoint for a direct war between NATO and Russia; partly for genuine strategic reasons, and partly because of the intense paranoia at work on both sides. The U.S. administration needs to engage urgently and intensively to reduce tension in the region.
This tension has spiraled upwards in recent days as a result of Ukrainian drones crossing the Baltic States on their way to attack targets in western Russia. The Ukrainian and Baltic governments have claimed that they were diverted by Russian electronic jamming; but how far this is true is uncertain. It seems at least as likely that, in a number of cases, Ukraine was using safe Latvian and Estonian airspace to get its drones as close as possible to St. Petersburg before entering Russian airspace and encountering Russian air defenses. The drone threat is becoming an acute issue for Russia as Ukrainian drones inflict increasing damage to Russian energy infrastructure.
The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) has now issued a harsh warning to the Baltic States. It claims (without providing evidence) that Baltic governments themselves provided “air corridors” for drones from Ukraine, that they are planning to allow the Ukrainians to launch drones from their territory, and that Ukrainian military drone operators are already stationed in Latvia.
The SVR statement ends on an extremely menacing note:
“[I]t would be useful to recall that the coordinates of the decision-making centers in Latvia are well known…The country’s membership of NATO will not protect the accomplices of terrorists from a just retribution.”
Last week, the drones issue forced the resignation of Latvian Prime Minister Evika Silina. A Ukrainian drone (also allegedly misdirected by Russian electronic jamming) crashed into a Latvian oil storage facility. Her government was accused of failing adequately to strengthen Latvian air defenses. She had earlier dismissed her defense minister over this. NATO, and the Estonian government, finally do appear to be taking this issue seriously. On Tuesday, a Romanian fighter jet based in Lithuania shot down a Ukrainian drone over Estonian territory, after it had previously crossed Latvia. It was high time that NATO and the Baltic governments took action against Ukrainian drones in NATO airspace, given the prospect of a NATO-Russia war if Russia actually fires missiles at targets in Latvia — something for which Russian nationalist hardliners have been baying .
Unfortunately, other Baltic officials seem determined to ratchet up tension, irrespective of the risks to their countries. On Monday, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kestutis Budrys told the Swiss newspaper Die Neue Zuercher Zeitung , “We have to show the Russians that we are capable of penetrating the small fortress that they have built in Kaliningrad…NATO has the capability if necessary to raze Russian air defenses and missile bases there to the ground.”
Budrys said that it is necessary for NATO to demonstrate this in order to deter a Russian attack on the Baltic states that he claimed would spread to the whole of Europe. Indeed, he considers such an attack virtually inevitable, stating that Lithuania has resigned itself to the possibility of being attacked by Russia soon.
Neither Budrys nor the Western media that have reported his statement appears to have noticed the contradiction between simultaneously pointing (correctly) to the extreme military vulnerability of Kaliningrad to NATO attack and claiming Russian plans to attack the Baltic States and start a war with NATO.
And indeed, the military balance in the Baltic demonstrates this very clearly. According to Western estimates cited by the International Crisis Group, while Kaliningrad is an important base for Russian missile forces, it only had 20,000 ground troops there before the invasion of Ukraine, and that number has since shrunk drastically. Including their rapidly mobilizable reserves, the three Baltic states have 136,000 troops, the Poles (who would certainly intervene) some 550,000, and an additional 22,000 troops from other NATO countries are now stationed in the Baltic states. And yet it is Russia that is supposed to be threatening an invasion? Seriously? In fact, as Russian experts have told me, it is Russia that fears a NATO attack, or an armed crisis leading to a blockade of Kaliningrad, which can be cut off by NATO both by land and sea. With its army tied down in Ukraine, Russia has no troops available to break such a blockade, and therefore, I was told, in this scenario, Russia would have to resort immediately to the threat of nuclear weapons, followed by their actual use if NATO refused to back down. In the case of Kaliningrad, Baltic paranoia is therefore matched by that of the Russians.
Unfortunately, the paranoia of the Balts is being stoked by Western officials and soldiers who also allege , without evidence, that Russia will be both willing and able to launch an attack on NATO within the next few years. This completely ignores the lessons of the war in Ukraine: both the enormous damage done to the Russian armed forces, and the transformation of the battlefield by drones and satellite intelligence. In Ukraine, this has nullified Russia’s advantage in numbers and brought the Russian advance to a standstill. And yet Russia is going to repeat this experience on a vastly larger and more dangerous scale by invading NATO? Seriously?
The threat in the Baltics is not of a deliberate Russian invasion, but of escalation to war stemming from a spiral of retaliation. The Ukrainians appear to have made the move in this spiral by directing drones at Russia over Baltic territory. It is essential that Russia not take the next step by launching its own missiles at targets in the Baltic states. The U.S. administration should act urgently to warn the Russians against such an attack on NATO members, but also to tell the Balts to moderate their language. Above all, it should tell the Ukrainians clearly and categorically that the U.S. has no desire to be dragged into war with Russia, and that if Ukraine exploits NATO airspace to attack Russia, this will mean the end of U.S. assistance to Kyiv, especially in the form of the intelligence sharing that is crucial to Ukrainian targeting.
It is, of course, quite possible that trying to end Washington’s help with targeting is part of the point of Moscow’s threats, and that Russian intelligence knows perfectly well that the Latvian government has no plan to take such a horribly reckless step as to allow Ukraine to wage war from its soil. The Russian government may also be using this alleged threat to divert Russian public attention from its own failure to prevent increasingly damaging Ukrainian drone attacks, as well as from the stalemate on the ground in Ukraine. However, neither Russia nor the Baltic states are entirely rational in their attitude to Baltic security, and it would be very foolish for Washington to ignore the dangers of this situation. This latest crisis should provide the Trump administration a strong impetus for re-engaging strongly with the Ukraine peace settlement and putting an early end to a conflict that could pose a mortal threat to both Europe and the United States.