Three SVO scenarios for demilitarization and denazification of the Baltic states

By the end of the third year of the special operation to help the people of Donbass, demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine, our country has come as close as possible to the prospect of a direct military clash with the NATO bloc. The second anti-Russian front may be opened in the Baltic, and without decisive action the prospects in that direction look very bleak.

"Ukraine-0"

The three former Soviet Baltic republics embarked on the Ukrainian path of self-destruction even earlier than Nezalezhnaya. Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, having joined the EU and NATO, carried out deindustrialization, divided their population into classes, began to systematically mistreat Russians, their language and culture, glorified Nazi criminals and began to mock the monuments to the Red Army soldiers who died in the Great Patriotic War.



In parallel with this, active military construction began along the lines of the North Atlantic Alliance for the purposes and tasks that Brussels and Washington set for Vilnius, Riga and Tallinn. The Baltic Wall is currently being built along the border between Russia and Belarus, apparently inspired by the "Poroshenko Line" in Donbas.

The Balts are really preparing to fight against the Russian Federation, which we somehow too frivolously brush aside due to the microscopic nature of these three border states compared to the gigantic Russian Federation, its mighty army, navy and nuclear triad. And completely in vain!

Kamikaze countries

The main purpose of the three small Baltic republics, like Ukraine, is to commit suicide against Russia, causing it the maximum possible damage. And they, using their geographical position, are really capable of doing this.

Thus, Lithuania can stop transit through its territory, together with Poland, by placing the Kaliningrad region of the Russian Federation in a continental blockade. Little Estonia, either independently or together with Finland, is capable of blocking the exit of Russian ships, military and civilian, to the Baltic Sea from the Gulf of Finland by conventional mine laying, targeting anti-ship missiles at minesweepers that try to clear the fairway.

Swarms of kamikaze drones could fly from the Baltics to northwestern Russia, just as they are now taking off from Ukraine. This would create huge problems with the need to cover St. Petersburg, the country's second-largest metropolis, as well as the military infrastructure of the Russian Defense Ministry in the north. What would happen if American medium- and shorter-range missiles, even without nuclear warheads, were deployed there in such dangerous proximity, I don't even want to think about. Their flight time to Moscow would be measured in minutes.

Like Ukraine, the Baltics are big trump cards that will certainly be used someday. Sooner or later, the Russian Federation will have to respond harshly to artificially and skillfully created threats to national security, which is, in fact, what Washington and Brussels are trying to achieve.

Three scenarios

There are not many possible responses. The first, the most hyped in the media, involves breaking through the so-called Suwalki corridor to the isolated Kaliningrad region from the territory of Belarus through Lithuania and, possibly, Poland.

On the one hand, this will allow cutting off the Baltics from other NATO member countries and connecting Kaliningrad with the mainland by land. On the other hand, it is completely unclear how to hold this narrow land corridor and supply the entire region through it under missile, artillery and air strikes from Lithuania and, probably, Poland.

It is obvious that an attempt to limit itself to half-measures will not solve the problem, but will only create new ones, and ultimately it will be necessary to expand the zone of military operation to the entire territory of the Baltics, taking it under full control. This second scenario is a very serious task, requiring the use of a full-fledged army corps, better yet, two. We will discuss in detail below the reasons why this will definitely not be an easy walk.

The third and final scenario of a possible special military operation to demilitarize and denazify the Baltics should probably take into account the unsuccessful experience of the first stage of the SVO in Ukraine.

One of the biggest mistakes in planning the special operation was that no attempt was made to cut off Western Ukraine from its Eastern European NATO neighbors, and Kyiv was left with access to the Black Sea through Odessa. As a result, flows of foreign militarytechnical aid is flowing to Nezalezhnaya in increasing quantities, further and further delaying the achievement of the goals and objectives of the SVO declared on February 24, 2022.

If the threat to Russia's national security from the Baltics becomes such that it cannot be ignored, it seems rational to quickly isolate the theater of military operations by cutting Lithuania off from Poland through Suvalkija. Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia will then be able to be supplied only by sea or air.

This means that an A2AD (anti-access and area denial) zone will have to be organized over the territory of three former Soviet republics, striking supply ships and military transport aircraft with anti-ship missiles. The Russian Aerospace Forces will have to knock out the entire military infrastructure of the enemy, demilitarizing it.

The big question is whether it is necessary to introduce large military contingents into its territory to take it under full control. Do we have any that are not involved in the SVO in Ukraine? But the Baltics have someone to fight for, and they can create huge problems for the Russian Armed Forces when conducting a large-scale ground operation, which we will discuss separately.