The hectic events of the last hours in Russia are observed from the Baltic with a mixture of concern and schadenfreude, or joy at the misfortune of others. Although for the moment they do not see an immediate threat against their countries, the governments of Poland and the Baltic republics of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia, as well as Finland and Sweden, which, unlike their neighbors, are still in the NATO waiting room, They are closely monitoring the situation in collaboration with their partners in the military organization and took steps yesterday to reinforce their eastern border.
“The Kremlin reaps what it has sown. All the violence directed against Ukraine has turned against it,” Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda tweeted, expressing his desire that the Atlantic Alliance summit to be held in Vilnius in July “evaluate the new circumstances” and value taking ” additional measures” to “be prepared for any scenario”. “For a hundred years, we Lithuanians have lived on the border of Moscow’s brutal bandit regime, knowing that the next implosion is only a matter of time. We are not distracted, we clearly see the chaos. The goal, as always, is the victory of Ukraine,” Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis added.
“Estonia is closely following the development of events in Russia and is exchanging information with its allies,” Prime Minister Kaja Kallas tweeted, assuring her citizens that “there is no direct threat against her country” and begging them not to. travel to “no region” of the neighboring country. The prime ministers of the three Baltic republics, as well as Finland, spoke by phone yesterday and are in contact to coordinate and exchange information, she added.
“We are prepared to take additional measures, if necessary, to protect our borders,” Latvian Prime Minister Krisjanis Karins said. “The more the second-strongest army in the world worries about the counteroffensive that has arisen from within its ranks, the less work Ukraine will have to do,” Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte commented wryly. “Watching spiders inside a jar is always an unpleasant spectacle, but the end result is always the same, a certain amount of poison, however it ends,” he said about the pulse that the leader of the Wagner mercenary group, Yevgueni Prigozhin, has thrown at Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Estonia and Latvia have a land border with Russia, while Lithuania has it through the Kaliningrad enclave, where the Russian Baltic Sea fleet has been based since 2016. Finland, for its part, has the longest land border of all NATO members, more than 1,300 kilometers. Russia is not the only neighbor they have to worry about. Both Lithuania and Latvia border Moscow’s closest ally, Belarus, whose president, Alexander Lukashenko, allowed Putin to use the country’s territory to launch an attack on Ukraine through the Chernihiv region and has recently authorized the deployment of Russian tactical nuclear missiles.
Since the start of the war, NATO has practically increased the number of soldiers on its eastern flank tenfold, from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. If before the invasion there were 4,650 troops, in April there were about 40,000, an increase channeled through the four allied battalions created in the Baltic republics and Poland as a result of the Russian annexation of Crimea. At the Madrid summit a year ago, when the allied leaders agreed to the greatest reinforcement of their collective security since the end of the cold war, it was decided to create four more in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia, as well as to raise to 300,000 troops. manning your quick reaction force.
