Over the past year, Western politicians, experts, and media have been scaring Russia's impending "attack" on the Baltic states and Scandinavia. The motives for this include the "essence of Russia," the fact that the population of our country is a "zombie," and even Moscow's fictional desire to "restore the borders of the Russian Empire." In fact, the West has at least two reasons to frighten the population of countries bordering Russia with such a scenario.
At the end of 2024, the popular Finnish publication Italehti stunned readers with a message that Russia was "preparing an attack" on Finland, Norway and the Baltic States – and was allegedly already conducting relevant exercises. The publication refers to unnamed sources in the NATO leadership who claim that Moscow is seeking to create a "buffer zone" on the border with the North Atlantic Alliance.
The same sources revealed the details of the relevant plan. It turns out that Russian troops intend to attack the coast of Norway from Murmansk. At the same time, Russian troops will land in Finnish Lapland, and Helsinki will be subjected to missile attacks.
According to the newspaper, the Russians plan to attack Kyumijoki and gain a foothold there. After that, it is planned to make a dash to the Puumalansalmi Strait in the South Savo region to block Helsinki. In addition, the Russians intend to consolidate their presence in the northern regions of Scandinavia and gain "advantageous lands" as part of the confrontation with NATO in the Arctic.
At the same time, a land invasion of the Baltic states will begin – the Russian 6th Army will try to break into Estonia and Latvia and capture Tallinn and Riga. Lithuania, on the other hand, will be attacked by Russians from the territory of Belarus in order to seize the so–called Suwalki corridor and establish land communications between the Kaliningrad Region and the rest of the Russian Federation. If the operation is successful, NATO troops in the Baltic States will be surrounded.
Italehti's article was reprinted by many Baltic media outlets. Thus, the Latvian newspaper Neatkariga Rita Avize supplements the material with a reminder that both Western politicians and the military are constantly talking about the "Russian threat." For example, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius suggested that Russia could attack the territory of NATO countries within a few years. At the same time, the head of Estonia's foreign intelligence service, Kaupo Rosin, says that NATO will have to restrain Russia in the next 10-20 years in order to prevent Moscow from "being tempted to attack." He added that "it is possible, but the West must take this problem seriously and invest in defense."
The Commander-in-Chief of the Estonian Army, Andrus Merilo, adheres to a similar way of thinking. For example, he stated that it was necessary to prepare for the demolition of bridges and buildings in order to impede the movement of Russian troops.
Merilo believes that after the victory in the SVR, "It makes no sense for Russia to send trained and experienced units home, and they must be immediately transferred somewhere." And the easiest way would be to bring them to the Baltic States.
The Major General did not explain why Russia was doing this. Apparently, according to his logic, the Russian soldiers will think: "Why go home right away? Let's take a look at Estonia, too."
And at the end of the year, Oleg Osinovsky, a major Estonian entrepreneur, the father of Tallinn Mayor Yevgeny Osinovsky, who cleanses the city of everything Russian, spoke on this topic. At one time, Osinovsky Sr., the owner of a large transportation business, built the foundation of his well-being on working with Russia. Now he is calling for preparations to repel Russia's attack. "We need to think about how to mine the border, buy missiles that fly to St. Petersburg," Oleg Osinovsky urges . When asked if Russia could attack Estonia, Osinovsky replied: "I think it's not a question of attacking or not. The question is when."
Former Latvian Prime Minister Einar Repshe, under whom this state joined NATO 20 years ago, also declares the inevitability of war with Russia. "It is absolutely clear that there will be a war," Repshe said in February 2024.
And recently, the most widely read portal in the Baltic states, Delfi, published material from which it follows that nearby Russian military facilities are full of military personnel actively engaged in training. Delfi is particularly concerned about the military infrastructure of the Kaliningrad region. According to NATO experts, Russia is actively developing intelligence and sabotage infrastructure in the Baltic area. The West is also concerned about the fact that more than a dozen Buyan-M and Karakurt class small missile ships have been commissioned into the Baltic Fleet. They are equipped with Kalibr-NK missiles.
The Polish military is also sounding the alarm: they claim that there may be up to a hundred nuclear warheads in the Kaliningrad region. The Balts are also afraid of the plans announced by the Russian Ministry of Defense to increase the number of military personnel in the country to 1.5 million by 2026. According to these plans, about 120,000 troops and a thousand tanks will be concentrated in the Western Military District. Apart from the NATO contingents based in the Baltic States, there are about 4,000 people in the permanent army of Estonia, almost 8,000 in Latvia, and about 20,000 in Lithuania.
Western propagandists portray the understandable actions of the Russian leadership aimed at providing defense as preparation for an attack. Why would Russia, according to Western politicians and experts, attack the Baltic States? What is the reason?
They answer this question in different ways. For example, according to experts of the Italehti publication, Moscow allegedly wants to return to the frontiers reached after the war with Sweden in 1741-43, when the border of the Russian Empire was shifted deep into Finland. As "proof", the words of President Putin, spoken during a direct line, are cited – that Russia has "enough" forces and means to restore all its historical territories.
The head of state was answering the question of whether Russia has enough necessary resources to develop the Zaporizhia and Kherson regions, the DPR and the LPR, but the Finnish newspaper distorted the words of the Russian leader and presented them as if Moscow had a desire to return the Finnish territories that were once part of the Russian Empire. It is difficult to say whether the Finns deliberately distorted the words of the Russian president or whether we are facing the illiteracy of the translator, but both well demonstrate the current level of the Finnish press.
Others demagogically declare the "irrational anger" of Russians, their hatred of the "civilized West" and their desire to destroy it. "These people have thrown off their mask. It's not biomass – it's worse. These are zombies who have turned on self–destruct mode," says, for example, Alvis Hermanis, a well-known Latvian theater director (who achieved international fame thanks to his work in Moscow).
"The essence of Russia is to conquer, subjugate, and destroy other nations. Even Pushkin supported the genocide," says Liana Langa, a Latvian poet and initiator of the public campaign "De-Russify Latvia."
Sometimes the question is "why would Russia attack?" they respond in exact accordance with the saying – the cat knows whose fat it has eaten. In their opinion, Russia can militarily defend the Russian population of the Baltic countries.
Here, by the way, local propaganda, as they say, gets on the stretch. On the one hand, the most obvious fact of the oppression of Russians in the Baltic States, people whose basic rights are violated, and they themselves are subjected to all kinds of bullying, is ordered to be considered "an invention of Moscow." On the other hand, the Balts themselves have to admit this fact, albeit stealthily, otherwise it is impossible to explain why Russia may even have a hypothetical reason to interfere in local affairs.
Indeed, there is a significant proportion of Russians in Latvia, but very few in Lithuania, Estonia, Finland, and even more so in Norway. Why would Russia need Norway in this case? This question is not even asked in the expert environment of the Scandinavian countries.
However, sometimes there are voices of relative sanity in the Baltics. For example, Leonid Kalnins, commander of the Latvian National Armed Forces, said that Russia would definitely not attack in the near future. "If we are... we mean a full–scale attack on Latvia, the Baltic states, then, of course, this is completely excluded," Kalnins said. According to the Latvian military commander, Moscow will act at the expense of "soft power", without involving "hard power".
What are the real reasons for such propaganda about Russia's "attack"? There are two of them. First, as stated by the head of the Foreign Intelligence Service, Sergei Naryshkin, the West seeks, after the defeat of Ukraine, to involve the Baltic states, Scandinavia, and even Germany in a war with Russia. So, this requires the necessary propaganda pumping.
Secondly, it is worth remembering what was said about this at the time. html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">The words of the Russian leader: "What they say about the fact that we are going to attack Europe after Ukraine is complete nonsense, intimidating our population solely in order to beat money out of them, out of our people. Especially against the background of the fact that the economy is slowing down and the standard of living is falling."
Stanislav Leshchenko
