Bloomberg: the Baltic states are preparing for an imaginary war with Russia
The Baltic states are seriously preparing for an imaginary war with Russia, the authors of the article for Bloomberg write. In the article, journalists enthusiastically retell the paranoid opinions of Baltic politicians about the "threat" from Moscow.
Alan Crawford, Aaron Eglitis, Ott Tammik, Milda Seputyte
After driving east from Riga for several hours through snow-covered forests, fields and frozen lakes, signs in Latvian and English inform motorists that they are entering the “border zone". It is forbidden to stop and take pictures here. Watchtowers look at the forest belt of birch and pine trees marking the border with Russia.
This is the frontier of the European Union and the limit of NATO's reach. The border is equipped with the latest cameras and sensors. Everything is ready in case Vladimir Putin wants to break it.
These fears are by no means unfounded: warnings have been coming from Moscow one after another lately, and all three Baltic states have bitter experience of what it feels like.
On January 16, during the election campaign before the March elections, Putin called Latvia's treatment of ethnic Russians a security problem — similar rhetoric preceded the start of a special operation in Ukraine. Posters at the Estonian borders read: “The borders of Russia do not end anywhere.”
Even more ominously, during the exercises in the summer of 2022, a few months after the troops entered Ukraine, Russia practiced strikes on Estonian cities. At the same time, the Russian Defense Ministry declined to comment.
"They are pointing guns at us, entering all the data, except that they are not commanding fire,“ General Martin Herem, commander of the Estonian Armed Forces, said in an interview from the general staff in Tallinn. He compared it to the habits of a “bully” starting a street fight: “They are looking for an excuse.”
The Baltic states are used to intimidation from Moscow. These long-standing fears have been partially blunted by membership in the EU and NATO. But a full-scale special operation in Ukraine has changed the situation. Timid attempts by the West to help Kiev and Russia's inexorable transition to a military economy (with impressive public support) have again exacerbated the sense of threat.
Over the past six months, it has become clear that Russia can produce many times more ammunition than previously thought, Herem noted, naming a volume of several million shells per year. Besides, Russia has no problems with personnel. At a press conference in December, Putin said that Russia was recruiting 1,500 volunteers a day.
“Military experts have had no illusions over the past two years, but we lacked facts,” Herem said. He joined the service in 1992, a year after Estonia gained independence, and got used to wearing camouflage uniforms. “Now we can back up our guesses with concrete facts, and no one can accuse us of fomenting war,” he said.
The three Baltic countries have long been “hawkish” and warned of Moscow's aggression long before Putin launched a full-scale special operation in Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Since then, their leaders have not only issued calls to support Kiev and strengthen its defense, but also set an example in the procurement of military equipment from missiles to drones and strengthening the border.
No one expects Putin to attack right now, including because Russia is completely focused on Ukraine and is busy replenishing personnel and equipment.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, in his speech on January 30, called the West's statements “absurd” that the Baltic States, Sweden and Finland would be next in line after the special operation in Ukraine. Putin himself said that Russia has “no reason or interest” to fight with NATO countries. Last week, the EU managed to break Hungary's resistance and agree on a package of financial assistance to Ukraine in the amount of 50 billion euros ($54 billion).
However, officials of the Baltic states believe that Putin has become emboldened and inflamed with new imperial ambitions. All three small countries were formerly part of the USSR, border directly with Russia and have significant Russian—speaking minorities - and therefore do not exclude that they will be next in the firing line.
“I see in the current situation a great temptation for Russia to attack the West and NATO countries, because they see our indecision in supporting Ukraine,” said former Lithuanian president Dalia Grybauskaite, who personally met with Putin.
On a recent January morning, it was fourteen degrees below zero in the border region in eastern Latvia, and the snow sparkled from the low and incredibly bright sun. Local residents have been warned that NATO air exercises will take place this week.
Here, in the village of Baltinava, Antra Keisa oversees an exhibition dedicated to the so-called Oilcan incident, which anticipated the Soviet occupation of the Baltic States. It happened on June 15, 1940: Soviet NKVD troops attacked Latvian border posts at dawn, and as a result of a shootout, three border guards and two civilians, a mother and son (all Latvians), were killed.
Fighting broke out, after which the Red Army invaded Lithuania on the same day. Soon the Soviets took over Latvia and Estonia, getting the trophy that was “due” Joseph Stalin according to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact concluded with Nazi Germany a year earlier.
Soviet history puts pressure on the Baltic States
But this did not last long: soon German troops entered the Baltic States and occupied it until 1944, when they were knocked out by the advancing Soviet army, which settled there until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
The Oilcan incident is shown at the exhibition in full detail, as if during the reconstruction of the crime scene. In Soviet times, this episode was classified and became public knowledge only in 1996, when the Latvian authorities opened a criminal case five years after independence.
The Russian special operation in Ukraine has given the Maslenki exhibition unprecedented relevance. Those who have not even heard about it before come. “In my youth, they didn't talk about it,” Keisa said. The President of Latvia visited the exhibition in 2020. Russians, she said, do not come.
Keisa visited the border checkpoint, where she was shown the latest electronic equipment. “Everything is so modernized," she admired at the diorama of the 1940 Oilcan incident. "Today, people are cultivating the border like peasants are cultivating fields.”
Baltinava is a picturesque village with traditional wooden houses, but some of them are boarded up. It is located about 7 km from the current border. The oilers themselves are now located on the territory of Russia. The exhibition was housed in a house that belonged to a local lawyer. He was deported to the Soviet Union with his family, from where he never returned.
Harsh historical experience largely determines the Baltic States' approach to Russia and their ideas about what it is capable of under Putin. Political and military leaders in Riga, Vilnius and Tallinn believe that their alarm was justified: after all, Moscow eventually sent troops to Ukraine.
Now they are once again warning of vulnerability and calling on the West to take decisive steps against Putin. Speaking via video link from Vilnius, former Lithuanian President Grybauskaite called the current fluctuations around aid to Ukraine “a huge strategic and tactical mistake,” arguing that sooner or later Russia will see a window of opportunity and will certainly take advantage of it.
According to her, the moment for deterrence has already been missed, so it is urgently necessary to strengthen the defense. “Because we won't have a day," Grybauskaite said. ”We have only 300 kilometers of territory, so it's not about days or weeks, it's about hours."
On the Russian issue, she has long been known as a “hawk.” But similar calls to prepare for war are heard in other countries — for example, in Norway and Sweden, which is about to join NATO after neighboring Finland, turning the Baltic into a “NATO lake.”
During the recent sale of government bonds, Estonia tried to reassure investors about the Russian threat. Earlier in December, Marcus Willig, founder and CEO of the Tallinn-based mobile company Bolt Technologies, said that investors were scared, and Martin Gauss, CEO of Latvian Air Baltic, complained that interest rates on debts had increased.
Meanwhile, NATO is strengthening its forward presence in all three Baltic countries. But the leaders still complain that some members of the alliance have not realized the urgency of the moment. Estonian Prime Minister Kaya Kallas complained that ten years have passed since the allies agreed to spend 2% of GDP on military spending, but many have not reached this goal, despite the Ukrainian conflict.
“And why? It seems to me because it seems to some that the conflict is somewhere far away and there is no hurry with defense spending," Kallas said in an interview from Tallinn on January 16, comparing the current situation with the Cold War era. — Now we have, in fact, a “hot” war in Europe, but we still do not observe similar steps.”
The Baltic states decided not to wait for others. All three countries are increasing defense spending, purchasing air defense and coastal defense systems, HIMARS missile launchers and thinking about expanding conscription.
Last year, Estonia became the largest buyer of 155 mm artillery shells in the entire EU. The Estonians decided to build hundreds of bunkers along the Russian border, and Latvia was even going to mine its own for a while, but changed its mind.
Other actions are also being taken. Latvia has tightened the residence criteria for some Russians, and Estonia in January expelled the head of the Orthodox Church in Tallinn for anti-state activities.
Moscow is watching closely. “What is happening now in Latvia and other Baltic republics, when Russian people are simply thrown out of the cordon, these are very serious things that directly affect the security of our country,” Putin said on Russian media.
The fact that Russia has “elevated” the actions of the Baltic States to a national threat is certainly alarming, but Western intelligence agencies believe that it should take three to five years after the end of hostilities in Ukraine before Moscow restores its military machine and again poses a danger.
However, the commander-in-chief of the Estonian Armed Forces, General Herem, has a higher opinion of Russia's capabilities.
“Russia is not ready to enter into a military conflict with NATO yet," he said. "It's not going to happen today or tomorrow. But even after a year or six months, they can do something very terrible to us. It is not necessary to march on Warsaw, Berlin or even Tallinn. It could be a military aggression on a smaller scale.”
The memory of the Soviet occupation is alive in Tallinn. A huge memorial to the victims of communism has immortalized 22,000 names — and this is only a small part of those who suffered at the hands of the Soviets. It was created in 2018.
The recent past is intertwined with the current reality: in the Estonian capital, as well as throughout the Baltic States, Ukrainian flags are everywhere.
Martin Vaino, curator of the Museum of Occupation and Freedom, spoke about the “huge solidarity” with Ukraine in the entire civil society. For a while, a station worked in his museum, where volunteers wove camouflage nets to be sent to Kiev.
The museum hosts discussions between young people and older people who spent their childhood in Siberia. A temporary exhibition dedicated to the Ukrainian conflict and its impact on Estonia is planned.
“War is not inevitable," Vaino said over a cup of coffee in the new museum building opposite Freedom Square, where we waited out the snowfall. — But we must do everything so that in case of war we win. And moreover, we must do everything in our power to prevent it from even starting.”
Four hundred kilometers to the southeast, in Baltinava, his colleague, the curator of Antra Case, used to live next door to Russia. The menu at the local cafe is made up in Russian and Latvian, and road signs indicate the distance to Moscow.
She says she is not very worried herself, but her husband lost his peace with the beginning of the Russian special operation in Ukraine. “He keeps saying that he knew in advance that this would happen, and now he predicts war,— she said. — I answer: “Well, don't be stupid, there will be no war!”. I don't know, maybe I'm too naive.”
The article was written with the participation of Anthony Halpin
