In addition to building a common defence line, the Baltic nations also agreed to enhance cooperation on the development and deployment of HIMARS multiple rocket launch systems.
Justina Budgitinaite-Froehly – CEPA Feb , 2024
With concerns over the security situation in the Baltics mounting, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia agreed in January to build a common Baltic defense line along their borders with Russia and Belarus.
The idea seems to exploit lessons from the highly effective defensive systems that have worked well in Ukraine.
According to the Lithuanian Minister of Defense, Arvydas Anušauskas, the defense line will include a complex set of measures designed to impede the movement of enemy forces invading the Baltics.
The plans include a network of around 600 fortified bunkers in Estonia alone, at a cost of some $64m, and 18 counter-mobility parks in Lithuania, where anti-personnel and anti-vehicle equipment like tank traps will be stored.
The defensive terrain will include the creation of natural barriers such as tree-lined avenues and a deepening of drainage ditches in the border region. Existing fences with elements of concertina razor wire along the Lithuanian and Latvian borders with Belarus, which were installed in the context of the 2021-2022 migrant crisis orchestrated by Minsk, would be incorporated into the fortification system.
The plans exploit some lessons from Ukraine’s battlefields. While there have been successful offensives by Ukraine and the Russian invaders, defense in depth, including bunkers and trenches, has proved highly effective. Ukraine is currently investing $500m in new fortifications.
The Baltic defenses send a signal to the Kremlin and help strengthen the credibility of NATO’s current regional deterrence and defense. Given the exposed geo-strategic location of the Baltic states, the issue of physical accessibility is crucial for both allies and adversaries.
In recent years, NATO has sought to improve deterrence by stationing multinational combat-ready forces in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.
Although this is clearly an improvement on the alternative, it is obvious that NATO troops on the ground, even if upgraded to brigade-size units as agreed at NATO’s Madrid Summit, would need very significant reinforcements to be able to withstand a full-scale Russian invasion.
However, there are questions about NATO’s ability to provide these reinforcements smoothly and on time. Since Russia would do everything in its power to prevent the arrival of alliance reinforcements, it is critical that Baltic and NATO’s current tripwire forces hold out for as long as possible.
For military reinforcements, the Baltic states depend on a single land route passage to Poland through the vulnerable Suwałki gap, a narrow neck of land between Poland and Lithuania, which has Belarus on one side and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad on the other. In a crisis, access to the Baltics for NATO reinforcements could be simultaneously attacked. Russia’s extensive anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) capabilities stationed in Kaliningrad are precisely designed to hinder NATO’s military mobility in the region.
Moreover, the Baltic states’ railway infrastructure is still better connected to Russia and Belarus than to Poland and the rest of continental Europe, and its railways are still mostly Russian rather than European gauge.
The continuing use of wide-track railway gauge puts Russia in a favorable position in terms of military logistics, as it would be able to move reinforcements and heavy military equipment by rail directly into the theatre. This will be alleviated somewhat by the new European-gauge $6.25bn Rail Baltica line from Warsaw to Helsinki, which runs through the Baltic states and is currently under construction.
NATO’s eastern members are beginning to think harder not just about the possibility of military aggression by Russia, but the details of how to fight against it more effectively. They will thereby substantially strengthen the alliance’s Eastern flank.
Dr Justina Budginaite-Froehly is a researcher focusing on strategic security issues and geopolitics in the Baltic Sea region.
Wait, this announcement, just one day after I said the Nazis weren’t dug in???
I mean, they have to say this, and maybe do it, because the Russians are coming, not.
American aggression rebuilds the the Iron Curtain, this time facing east.
NATO, the U.S. and its member puppets are wasting time, resources and manpower building any defence from Russia. The Russian government has stated over and over they have no plans to invade beyond the Ukraine. I believe them, because Putin, no matter what you may think of him, has more common sense than every western leader put together. What the U.S. and NATO should be doing is ordering Zelensky to initiate an armistice at once with Russia because not one weapon, not one dollar will be sent to you, beginning now. Only the billionaire players and their interests believe in continuing the slaughter. The whole Ukraine mess was initiated by the U.S. and Nato to begin with.
Will people never learn!
Fortified Lines entrap body and mind of the defenders and the aggressors will almost always walk over them. Look at previous ones’ ineffectiveness and draw your own conclusion.
The next stage in Whiteocide? Are the Aryan Lithuanians, Estonians & Latvians next to be setup by NATO/ZWOG & decimated/exterminated by Jew-Commie ghoul Putin & Yid Boris Spiegel’s ‘World Without Nazism’ government agency? You know these Commie Yids don’t like it when SS veteran marches are still being held in Ukraine & these Baltic countries.
The Anal Empire is not going to fight Russia, it’s all hot air to bamboozle the Goy. The Empire knows it’s economically and militarily finished but it needs to keep the weak minded distracted. We know what’s coming, economic meltdown the U S will be $40 trillion in debt by year’s end, food shortages and internal racial wars to name just a few. Go to any city in Britain and you will see the decay, empty shops,once thriving factories turned into flats for students or immigrants, ever increasing number of indigenous people sleeping rough, streets that once thrived are now third world favelas. The Crowleyists can stamp on the likes of Richard Hall but the Anal dam has been broken we just wait for the flood. Ukraine isn’t news anymore, I recently saw on Telegram a Spetsnaz soldier say his main adversary has been French which tells you that a) NATO is on the ground and b)that this Zionist cancer afflicts a lot of European males . How could any serious minded patriotic man fight for the likes of the deviant Macron ? The Ukraine project has ceased it is dead the cookie party is no more .
Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia are 3 little piss-ant size nations that are always raising hell, baiting the bear.
Then if Russia does attack, they’ll be screeching like little bitches for NATO help.
Those 3 nations are filled with Jews, leftovers from the Pale of Settlement, so its not a surprise they’re shit stirrers.
Go ahead & build that Siegfried Line, it will be just as effective as the original one.
political climate changes, climate change .
CLIMATE CHANGE !
Do they at least give the public a casus belli? Why war with Russia? It doesn’t make any sense. But reason, common sense, fact-based reality, logic… are things fading away in commie-infiltrated Western societies.
Putin more or less said that in 1990 it was felt that this friction would end because now Russia was just as Bourgeois (old Commie vocabulary) as our side, yet the Scum found a way to keep it going, all based on falsehoods for the PR, comical to people who pay attention
A fortified border to control who enters your cuntry, now there’s a novel idea. If only the Jewnited States and cuntries of Jewrope would embrace such forward thinking to stem the deluge of invaders….
How stupid can one get? Do the three ugly ducklings not remember the maginot line? Have they not realised that the orchesteation of war today and weaponry used is different to ww2. Have rhey not been paying attention to what is happening in ukraine
As someone who used to build field defences in the British Army, I can confirm that they’re pretty useless against thermobaric, tactical nuke and chemical weapons.
Wait til the Russians take their gloves off. Ha ha .
Never mind though, Carl the Schmuck is giving us the benefit of his hard-won wisdom once again at the top of this page.
The clown.
The Maginot line comes to mind,
That was a complete waste of brass too, & idiotic.
The tour was good though, very interesting,
Apparently, The lads who had to operate the structure often went quite mad !
Mad beyond being bored.
Poor souls.
It would be interesting to know, If those French troops were inwardly ‘Chuffed’ that the Wehrmacht
simply went around it, rather than the expected full on confrontation,
Maginot Line 2.0.
Remember the definition of Insanity?
It does, however, involve spending a lot of money.