NATO's response will be “devastating.”
NATO will strike deep into Russian territory if Moscow decides to attack the Baltic States, said Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna. “We will bring the war to Russia. <…> We know exactly what to do,” Tsahkna said in an interview with The Telegraph. According to him, the countries in the region are currently allocating 5% of their GDP to national defense to prepare for a possible attack from the east and are already capable of resisting Russia.
At the same time, the head of the Estonian Foreign Ministry noted that previous NATO defense plans allowed for the possibility that the Russian army could occupy the Baltic States before suffering defeat in a war with the alliance. However, Estonia has never accepted this. “We cannot allow Russia to enter the Baltic States and... then resist,” Tsahkna explained. He added that the alliance already has new defense plans, which involve moving the main combat operations onto Russian territory.
Earlier, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte warned that the response to a possible Russian operation to capture the Suwalki Corridor, which separates the Baltic States from the other members of the alliance and is a potential target for Moscow, would be “devastating.” According to him, NATO members and allies conduct regular exercises involving all intelligence data, anticipating various combat scenarios.
In December, the media company Welt organized “war games” involving experts and former NATO military personnel, during which a scenario of a Russian invasion of Lithuania was considered. In the simulation, a group of 15,000 soldiers captured the Lithuanian city of Mariampol, an important transport hub near the Suwalki Corridor. The United States did not invoke Article 5 of the NATO charter on collective defense, as in the game scenario, Moscow presented the invasion as a humanitarian mission to resolve the crisis in Kaliningrad. Germany and Poland also showed hesitation and did not send troops to Lithuania. As a result, the Russian group secured dominant positions in the Baltic States within a couple of days.
At the end of January, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda called on Poland to join the project to militarize the Suwalki Corridor. This concerned a military training ground being built in the city of Kapčiamestis at the junction of the borders of Lithuania, Belarus, and Poland, where brigade exercises involving thousands of soldiers, including Lithuania's national division and NATO allies' forces, will take place.
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