Baltic security: Tensions on the frontier
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania remain wary that Russia will try to make the region the next conflict hotspot
Jarring reminders of the past are almost a weekly occurrence in the Baltic sea region these days.
Last weekend, the Swedish military launched a hunt for a foreign submarine, raising memories of its cold war chases in the 1980s of Soviet vessels using depth charges.
A few weeks earlier, an Estonian intelligence agent was snatched by Russian forces from just inside Estonia . And there are numerous other incidents from Russian air incursions of Swedish, Finnish and Estonian air space to an attempt by Moscow to prosecute Lithuanian deserters from the Soviet army a quarter of a century ago.
“We cannot shut off our memories. We know from our past how aggressive Russia can be if there is no very clear and strict action from the west against this kind of aggression,” says Marko Mihkelson, chairman of the Estonian parliament’s foreign affairs committee.
The historical associations are particularly resonant in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which were all illegally annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940 just as Crimea was by Russia earlier this year. That symmetry – plus the three Baltic countries’ status as the only ex-Soviet states to be members of Nato and the EU – leads many in western capitals and independent observers in Moscow to believe that Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, could next turn his attention to the region after Ukraine.
“I think that [any Russian military action] will be on a much lower scale than in eastern Ukraine. But they might still try to spark another hotspot – within Nato territory this time,” says Igor Sutyagin, a Russian military specialist at the Royal United Services Institute in London.
The mood in the Baltic countries is watchful. Ever since they regained independence in 1991 from the Soviet Union, the three countries have suffered periodic provocations from Russia such as the 2007 cyber attacks against Estonia.
But Baltic officials, who have oscillated between stark warnings on the Russian threat to get their western allies on board and trying to reassure their domestic populations that they are not at risk, project confidence from being in Nato, the military alliance with its doctrine of collective defence. The most recent Nato summit last month in Wales delivered much of what the Baltic states wanted, from a rapid reaction force to the semi-permanent presence of Nato troops in eastern Europe.
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“The right decisions were taken,” says Linas Linkevicius, Lithuania’s foreign minister. “[But] we are in a situation where we are expecting whatever. It is very difficult to predict what will happen. These events are a test mechanism of the reaction of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia but also international organisations such as the EU and Nato.”
The geopolitical stakes in the Baltics could scarcely be higher. Carl Bildt, Sweden’s former foreign minister, called them a “litmus test” for relations between the west and Russia two decades ago and they still are.
But, as members of Nato for the past decade, the potential prize for their destabilisation is all the greater for Mr Putin as it would call the alliance’s credibility into question. Mr Putin’s ruling circle views Nato as an organisation that is fundamentally hostile and a threat to Russia. So there was no doubting the significance of US President Barack Obama’s visit to Estonia last month, where he insisted defending Tallinn, Riga or Vilnius was “just as important as the defence of Berlin or Paris or London”.
In the Baltics themselves, there is a certain weariness about the behaviour of their bigger neighbour to the east. For them, what has happened this year in Ukraine was neither novel nor shocking as they all point back to Russia’s war with Georgia in 2008.
“They have seen that this divide-and- conquer strategy worked previously with the west. Now they are trying it against the unity of Nato,” says one Baltic security official.
The question in the Baltics and the west is how far Russia is prepared to go. Already it has started the verbal jousting that preceded its creeping invasion of parts of Ukraine, warning of threats to the local Russian speakers, which represent more than a quarter of the populations of Estonia and Latvia.
Nato’s principle of collective defence comes from Article 5 of its treaty, which says an attack on one country is an attack on all. So far, Russia’s probing – through the Estonian agent or the seizure of a Lithuanian fishing boat in international waters – has fallen below the threshold for Article 5. But some western experts question whether the US would be willing to risk a nuclear war to defend part of a Baltic country that few Americans had even heard of.
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“I am afraid that Putin will create an ethnic issue inside Estonia, and then play a game whereby the Estonians ask for Nato assistance,” says Andrew Michta, adjunct fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “Nato will then begin a debate internally about whether this is really an Article 5 situation, and with a hissing sound all credibility will evaporate from the alliance.”
Russia could use the same “hybrid” warfare tactics and techniques it has honed in Ukraine. These include using state-controlled Russian TV channels – widely watched by ethnic Russians in the Baltics – to spread propaganda and fan grievances as well as deploying special forces to whip up opposition.
All year Russian officials have railed against what they see as discrimination towards ethnic Russians in Estonia and Latvia, particularly those with the awkward legal status of non-citizen that limits their rights such as voting in elections. Mr Putin even referred recently to “open manifestations of neo-Nazism, which have become routine in Latvia and other Baltic countries”.
All of this gets short shrift from ministers in the two countries. “We are not discriminating against anyone. All this we have heard from Russian politicians is purely propaganda and regrets that the Soviet Union collapsed,” says Urmas Paet, Estonia’s foreign minister.
Some outside experts endorse this position too. Timofey Agarin, an expert on minorities in Europe at Queen’s University Belfast, says: “The Baltics are on the same page as the other European states. Where the difficulty is for Russian speakers is they have been the dominant majority in the Soviet Union and they now have to adapt to being a minority.”
But on the ground, there are rumblings of discontent, particularly among older Russian speakers. Vladimir Tamm, a Russian-speaking Estonian citizen, lives in the border town of Narva where four-fifths of the population is ethnic Russian. “Our region [north-eastern Estonia] could be part of Russia but not the rest of the country,” he says, before adding that he is “peaceful” and that Russians will never enter Estonia like they did in Ukraine.
The situation is perhaps more serious in Latvia, which has a higher proportion of non-citizens as well as a pro-Russian party that came first in this month’s parliamentary elections. Nils Usakovs, leader of the Harmony party, which has ties with Mr Putin’s United Russia movement, says: “When we see what happened in Crimea and Ukraine, I believe it can be a unique chance to redesign some of the things that we have done wrong in the past few decades.”
In Lithuania, where the Russian population is smaller, a different scenario could be to create an incident linked to Kaliningrad, the Russian enclave on the Baltic sea wedged between Lithuania and Poland. Analysts speculate that Moscow could covertly sabotage the train lines across Lithuania that serve as a vital transit corridor from Russia or, in the case of an uprising from Kaliningrad residents who have long complained of neglect from their mother country, send in troops to “restore order”.
Asked about whether Russia could use the same “little green men” used in Ukraine in Kaliningrad, Mr Linkevicius says: “You cannot exclude that – there could be some attempts to instigate a conflict. But we are in a different situation: we are members of Nato.” Mr Sutyagin says there is a real danger Russia could launch such operations. “Russia is pushing boundaries as far as possible. And it will keep pushing boundaries as far as it is allowed to,” he adds.
Another motive could be to distract attention from Russia’s worsening economic situation. Mr Sutyagin notes that it was a Russian interior minister, Vyacheslav Plehve, who invented the concept of a “small victorious war” to prevent revolution at home when he helped instigate the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-05. Mr Putin’s small victorious wars in Crimea and east Ukraine have boosted his popularity to record levels despite a sharp economic slowdown.
However, others say that Mr Putin will be more careful in the Baltics than he was in Ukraine. Alexander Golts, a military analyst and deputy editor of Ezhednevny Zhurnal, a Russian online newspaper, says the rotating presence of Nato troops in the Baltics will act as a constraint on Russia’s willingness to take risks. “In a situation where in Estonia or Latvia Brits or Americans will be deployed, it limits the opportunity for some kind of proxy war. Because immediately [if Russia attacks] the leaders of those countries will think about the threat to their own soldiers,” he says.
But he adds that it is unclear if Nato has done enough to ward off the Russian threat in the Baltics. “The question is not what you and I think is realistic. The question is that Mr Putin sometimes behaves very irrationally,” he adds.
Mr Mihkelson points to the increased presence of troops, equipment and aircraft in the region as evidence of Nato’s resolve: “We have the best possible insurance in today’s free world, which is membership of Nato and not only in words but also real reassurances.”
A further worry in the Baltics is that the attention of the west is drifting away. Calls to reverse EU sanctions on Russia are viewed with alarm, while there is also a sense the focus has shifted to the fight against Islamists in the Middle East, pushing Ukraine – and by extension the Baltics – down the priority list. “The Estonian population knows exactly what Russia is capable of,” says Hanno Pevkur, Estonia’s interior minister. “The question is: do some European countries understand the situation we are in?”
At the very least, many observers expect the provocations from Russia to continue and even increase in intensity.
Emmet Tuohy, research fellow at the International Centre for Defence Studies in Tallinn, says: “I don’t think these provocations add up to a sign that Russian troops will be landing in large numbers on the beaches any time soon. It is precisely a way of testing, while maintaining a fig leaf of plausible deniability throughout, how co-ordinated Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are – as well as Nato.”
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Status anxiety: Incursions push Sweden and Finland closer to alliance
Among the hundreds of incidents involving Russian aircraft over the Baltic sea this year, one thing stood out. The two countries to suffer serious incursions into their air space were Sweden and Finland, the only two in the region not in Nato, writes Richard Milne.
Those tensions have been heightened by the disclosure late on Friday by the Swedish armed forces that it is hunting a foreign submarine in the vast archipelago outside Stockholm. The military is refusing to comment on the nationality of the vessel it is seeking but newspaper Svenska Dagbladet says Swedish intelligence intercepted distress calls from a Russian submarine.
The news is awkward for Sweden’s new centre-left government, which is steadfastly against membership of Nato. Sweden and Finland cling to their nonaligned military status but both have partnerships with the military alliance and both have provided troops to Nato’s peacekeeping force in Afghanistan.
But despite the increased sabre-rattling from Russia, public support remains against Nato membership. In Finland, 58 per cent are against joining while just 26 per cent are in favour, according to a poll in August. A higher number are in favour of being Nato members if politicians push for it.
And that is what some politicians will try to do in next year’s parliamentary elections. Alex Stubb, the current centre-right Finnish prime minister, is pro-Nato and argues it would offer the country increased security.
In any case, Sweden and Finland have inched closer to Nato, last month signing “host nation” agreements that allow the alliance’s troops to deploy in the Nordic countries.
The Swedish and Finnish debate is followed with intense interest across the Baltic sea region. Many officials in the Baltics believe their own security is weakened by the two not being in Nato, especially as the Swedish island of Gotland – situated in the middle of the Baltic sea – is seen as being a target for a potential Russian attack.
One senior Baltic official says: “I think these provocations from Russia are an attempt to keep them out of Nato. But I wonder if it could have the opposite effect and force them in.”
