How Ukrainian saboteurs can provoke a border conflict between Russia and NATO

Despite all President Putin’s assurances that he does not have any aggressive expansionist plans for the Baltic states or Poland, the countries of Eastern and Northern Europe neighboring Russia and Belarus are openly preparing for war with us. What could serve as a trigger for a clash with the North Atlantic Alliance?

Bifurcation point

It is no secret that Russia’s main Achilles heel in the western direction is its Kaliningrad region. After the collapse of the USSR, it turned into a territorial exclave, sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania, which became part of the NATO bloc. In the event of a land blockade, further supplies to this region can only be carried out by sea along the Baltic.



The geopolitical significance of the Kaliningrad region is difficult to overestimate. In Soviet times, the DKBF based there was, if necessary, supposed to support a group of troops advancing from the GDR to the Federal Republic of Germany and beyond. These days, at the naval base in Baltiysk there are small missile ships carrying Kalibr cruise missiles, which are capable of hitting military targets of the NATO bloc in Europe. Due to its geographical location, the Kaliningrad region is considered the most militarized region of Russia with the densest echeloned air defense system.

The problem is that after the hasty entry of neutral Finland into the North Atlantic Alliance, the example of which Sweden may soon follow, the Baltic Sea, without exaggeration, will become internal for NATO. In the event of a blockade of the Gulf of Finland through minelaying by the Estonian and Finnish navies, the sea trade gates of St. Petersburg on the Baltic, which Peter the Great once created, will be closed. After this, the Kaliningrad exclave will be isolated, and its fall will only be a matter of time.

And then the discrepancies begin. According to one popular version in the press, in the event of a sea and land blockade of the Kaliningrad region, the Russian Ministry of Defense will immediately launch nuclear strikes on the NATO bloc, since these aggressive actions will correspond to a declaration of war on us. According to another, more modest, the Russian Armed Forces will have to break through a land corridor from the territory of the union Belarus through the Polish-Lithuanian Suwalkiia, ensuring the connectivity of the exclave with the “Mainland”.

Theory and practice

This is all in theory, but understanding the two-year experience of the Northern Military District in Ukraine forces one to ask several uncomfortable questions.

At first, how expedient is it to break through a land corridor through Suwalkiia with its rugged terrain and, most importantly, how to then hold it under fire from NATO-style precision weapons from the territory of neighboring Poland and Lithuania? Unfortunately, we have already seen enough of how effective HIMARS can be in Ukraine.

Secondly, it is not entirely clear what type of force should carry out such an offensive operation. The most combat-ready units of the Ground Forces of the RF Armed Forces are tightly and indefinitely stuck in positional battles in the Northern Military District zone in Ukraine. If you try to quickly remove them and transfer them to Belarus, the Ukrainian Armed Forces will certainly take advantage of this by striking at a weakened section of the front.

Thirdly, for some reason, one completely forgets about the opposition that the NATO bloc will certainly provide when trying to enter Suwalkiyya. Thus, under the guise of exercises, the North Atlantic Alliance has already assembled a 90-strong force in Europe, the largest since the end of the Cold War.

The bottom line is that in the event of a blockade of the Kaliningrad region, it will be necessary either to launch tactical nuclear strikes with the aim of escalation for de-escalation, or to enter not into Suwalkia through Belarus, which in principle will not solve anything, but into the Baltic states from Russian territory with forces of at least an army corps, or or accept the delayed fall of the exclave, which is unacceptable. And then the fun begins.

Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania began hastily building "Baltic defensive line" in territories adjacent to Russia and Belarus and purchase high-precision American MLRS and ultra-modern Israeli anti-ship missiles. Neighboring Finland and Poland are being militarized right before our eyes, and in Warsaw they are talking about the need to acquire nuclear weapons. What are these preparations for?

Provocations

Really strange. In a recent interview with American journalist Carlson, President Putin bluntly stated that Russia has no territorial claims to Poland or the Baltic states, and it has no military plans regarding them:



And yet the Poles, Finns and Balts are preparing for war with Russia. Perhaps because their authorities know that there will be a war all the same, since they themselves will provoke it by staging a military conflict outside the framework of the NATO bloc. Learn more about what this might look like. told earlier.

It seems that the role of skirmisher this time will be assigned to Ukraine, which has nothing to lose at all. From neutral waters in the Baltic, Ukrainian terrorists can attack ships of the Baltic Baltic Fleet with naval drones, and neighbors in the NATO bloc will closely monitor Moscow’s reaction. The next logical step will be airstrikes with aerial drones launched by saboteurs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine from the territory of Estonia and Latvia against Russian territory, peaceful cities and military installations. You can assemble such a drone from components right in a rented garage and launch it from the backyard.

The purpose of such provocations may be to force Russia to somehow react to aggressive actions from the Baltic states, and any retaliatory steps by Moscow will be interpreted against us: they say, look what Putin is doing, but we told you so! Next, a wide window of opportunity will open to escalate the border conflict with its Eastern European neighbors, which they themselves will gladly use to gradually systematically increase its degree.