The Baltic Front

The Baltic States were once again in the news over the weekend after successfully completing their transition from the BRELL (Belarus-Russia-Estonia-Latvia-Lithuania) energy ring to its EU-run counterpart. This was a long time coming and represented the latest US-instigated “decoupling” between the EU and Russia. The Russian mission to the EU criticized it as politically motivated and warned about rising energy costs in the bloc, which could contribute to its economic slowdown and possibly precede a recession.

Around the same time, Rostelecom claimed that their “underwater cable was damaged in the Baltic Sea as a result of external influence”, which follows a spree of prior incidents against Western cables that the US and European security services concluded were due to accidents according to the Washington Post. Some officials and media accused Russia of involvement in those incidents, which Moscow always denied, yet their security services apparently chose not to exploit those claims for political purposes.

That surprisingly pragmatic approach was interesting in and of itself, and it becomes even more so in hindsight given Rostelecom’s latest claim. Western intelligence agencies never pass up an opportunity to blame Russia for whatever it might be so it might have been the case that they cleverly declined doing so in order to then “plausibly deny” the most recent incident in the event that it was a hybrid war attack against Russia. It’s premature to say either way, but the possibility can’t be ruled out.

This sequence of events – the Baltic States’ symbolic transition from BRELL to its EU-run counterpart and Russia being the one to now report mysterious external damage to one of its underwater cables there – draws newfound attention to the Baltic front of the New Cold War. Truth be told, it can even be argued that this was the first front of the New Cold War due to them being the first – and thus far only – former Soviet Republics to join NATO, which they did in 2004 back when Russia was a lot weaker.

Even though President Putin opposed the bloc’s expansion, he wasn’t willing to risk war over this issue back then. That was due to Russia prioritizing the federal intervention in Chechnya, its armed forces having yet to modernize, and his own very different views about the West at the time. The first two are self-explanatory while the third requires some elaboration. Putin entered office wanting to cooperate with the West, albeit so long as the West respected Russia’s interests and treated it as an equal.

Readers might struggle to understand why he wanted to do so given everything that’s happened since then and is presently unfolding in Eastern Europe, but it was a totally different world two decades ago. Putin, like many shortly after the turn of the century, thought that a pragmatic partnership with the West was possible. As an old-school statesman who sincerely cares for his country’s national interests, he subconsciously projected this belief onto his peers, assuming that they shared the same imperatives.

That was an error in judgement in hindsight that he himself later acknowledged, especially with regard to taking Germany and France’s compliance with the Minsk Accords for granted after their former leaders admitted that they were duping him the whole time, but his options were also limited. The Russian Armed Forces weren’t anywhere near as strong as they are today, nor was the Russian economy, so victory – defined in this context as forcibly keeping the Baltic States out of NATO – wasn’t guaranteed.

The first might have underperformed while the second could have collapsed under the weight of Western sanctions so Putin exercised caution and thus chose not to militarily stop NATO’s expansion. Consequently, Northwestern Russia became more vulnerable to NATO, but Putin still believed that a pragmatic partnership with the West was possible. This was reinforced by the belief that EU would never capitulate to US pressure on Russia due to their complex economic and energy interdependences.

The paradigm through which he analyzed International Relations at the time and which influenced the formulation of Russian policy was discredited by 2007 when he made his famous speech at Munich, but the Baltic States had already joined NATO by then and were therefore under the US’ nuclear umbrella. Nevertheless, Russia’s nuclear capabilities served to deter conventional US aggression from the Baltics, so a cold peace prevailed along that front up until the special operation began three years ago.

Having learned his lesson after allowing the Baltic States to join NATO, which would have been difficult for Russia to militarily stop at the time anyhow for the reasons that were just explained even if he really wanted to, Putin vowed not to let Ukraine follow in their footsteps. The resultant NATO-Russian proxy war led to the US activating the Baltic front by ordering the deployment of more NATO forces there along with slowly developing plans for a “military Schengen” for facilitating even more in the event of a crisis.

These moves are very threatening from Russia’s perspective and are made all the more so by the proliferation of drones, which could be launched from NATO-controlled Baltic soil against the Union State as a de facto act of war, but then the bloc might “plausibly” claim that “private citizens” were to blame. These include Russian and Belarusian so-called “oppositionists”, who receive militant/terrorist training in the West. Some of them have even fought against Russia on Ukraine’s side.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko claimed in spring 2024 that his security services foiled an attempt to carry out a large-scale drone attack against Minsk from Lithuania, while publicly financed BelTA reported in November that militants are training to invade Belarus from there and from Poland. Given Lithuania’s and the other two Baltic States’ membership in NATO, Russia can’t preemptively thwart such unconventional threats to it and its mutual defense ally Belarus without risking World War III.

The same goes for kinetically responding to “plausibly deniable” hybrid warfare against its underwater cables in the Baltic should that be what happened with the latest incident that Rostelecom reported. Even though these three examples – drone attacks from the Baltics, a militant invasion from there, and these countries’ involvement in damaging Russia’s underwater cables – are all de facto acts of war, they aren’t always officially be treated as such by Russia given the Baltic States’ membership in NATO.

Much more dangerous than these three scenarios, however, is the growing pressure campaign against Russia’s Baltic semi-exclave of Kaliningrad. Lithuania briefly blockaded rail access between there and Belarus in summer 2022 on the false pretext that it was complying with Western sanctions. The crisis was resolved due to Russian and US mutual disinterest at the time in going to war over Kaliningrad but there could always be a recurrence of such provocations so Moscow won’t let its guard down.

Less than a year later in spring 2023, Poland reverted to using its historical name for Kaliningrad that was employed during the Commonwealth era when this region was its fief, which was followed by the Lithuanian President using his country’s historic name for it in an X post early last month. Russia condemned both of their decisions since they strongly implied informal territorial claims that could presage an even more intense pressure campaign in the coming future.

Kaliningrad is an integral region of Russia. It also hosts the Baltic Fleet and fulfills a strategic role in deterring NATO aggression due to its proximity to the US’ European bases, which gives Russia the credible capability of destroying those facilities with Oreshniks or whatever else in a few minutes tops. It’s therefore not an exaggeration to say that a significant portion of Russia’s strategic security is dependent on this geographically tiny region that’s physically separated from the “mainland”.

For that reason, it figures prominently in NATO and Russian planning, the first with regard to neutralizing this role and the second with respect to strengthening it. The Baltic States hate that Kaliningrad was given to the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic by Stalin after World War II instead of to Lithuania and/or Poland since this ensured that it remained under Moscow’s control and accordingly its nuclear umbrella after 1991. That’s the reason why they’re obsessed with destabilizing it.

It remains to be seen whether Trump will successfully purge his “deep state” – which refers in this context to his country’s permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies and specifically to their Russophoblic liberal-globalist elements – or if they’ll continue to influence or sabotage his policies. If he achieves what he set out to do, then this gradually intensifying pressure campaign against Kaliningrad might then abate, but failure could lead to it worsening to the point of provoking a crisis.

For the purpose of scenario forecasting, such a crisis could be sparked by what was earlier mentioned, namely drone attacks from the Baltics, a militant invasion from there, these countries’ involvement in damaging Russia’s underwater cables, and blockading Kaliningrad whether by rail and/or sea. There’s also always the possibility of foreign intelligence agencies trying to organize a Color Revolution there too. Any serious movement in these directions, even unilaterally by the Baltic States, could be disastrous.

That’s why it’s imperative that Trump successfully purges his “deep state” so that they can’t sabotage his peace efforts with Russia by orchestrating a provocation against Kaliningrad behind his back. He must then make it clear to the Baltic States that he won’t tolerate them doing any of this unilaterally either. To maximally deter them from defying him, he’d do well to also warn them that the US won’t extend Article 5 mutual defense guarantees to them if they’re guilty of provoking a crisis with Russia over Kaliningrad.

The Baltic front might therefore fizzle out or intensify, with each scenario dependent on the success or failure of Trump’s attempt to purge his “deep state”. Even in the best-case scenario, however, it’ll always remain a problem for Russia for simple geographic reasons. The same could have been the case for Ukraine had Putin not authorized the special operation. If NATO was on Russia’s Baltic and Ukrainian borders, not to mention if a coup turned Belarus westward too, then Russia would be in big trouble.

It's already bad enough that NATO expanded into the Baltics, but that’s why Russia helped Belarus thwart summer 2020’s Color Revolution and then resorted to force to stop the bloc from expanding into Ukraine since its national security would have been endangered if either happened. NATO’s Baltic-emanating threats remain manageable, but everything could have spiraled out of control if NATO also expanded to Belarus and/or Ukraine, which Russia won’t allow since it learned its lesson as explained.