A trio of European allies have agreed to build a joint defense line against a prospective invasion from Russia, as NATO leaders acknowledge their misgivings about a future war.
“There is no such thing as an impenetrable defense, but the price an adversary [would have] to invest to penetrate that defense is still significantly higher than he would have to pay now,” Estonian Defense Forces Col. Tarmo Kundla said Friday.
Those fortifications will face Baltic borders with Russia and Belarus, the Kremlin client state that allowed Russian President Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine from the north in an unsuccessful attempt to seize Kyiv in 2022. The war in Ukraine has proven a more difficult task than Kremlin strategists envisioned, but Russia’s “war footing” economy and vast reserves of Soviet-era military equipment pose longer-term threats to NATO borders, Western officials fear.
“We hear threats from the Kremlin almost every day … so we have to take into account that Vladimir Putin might even attack a NATO country one day,” German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius told Der Tagesspiegel, a German outlet, in an interview. “Our experts expect a period of five to eight years in which this could be possible.”
NATO leaders have begun to discuss that possibility more openly as the war in Ukraine has settled into a purported stalemate, the dynamics of which will favor Russia in the absence of sustained or even increased Western military assistance.
“What kind of message are we sending to Putin?” Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said Thursday at the World Economic Forum. “Are we deterring, or are we inviting? And this is where the anxiety of the Baltic states and, most likely, Poland comes from. The problem is that we don’t feel that Putin is deterred enough.”
Such prognoses reflect the growing consensus that Putin is “hell-bent on rebuilding the Russian Empire,” as British Defense Secretary Grant Shapps put it Monday.
“Rewarding his war with victory would only increase the risk of escalation,” Shapps said in a set-piece speech. “And we have come full circle, moving from a post-war to a pre-war world … Old enemies are reanimated. New foes are taking shape. Battle lines are being redrawn. The tanks are literally on Europe’s Ukrainian lawn.”
Congressional approval of new additional aid for Ukraine has been delayed by a standoff between President Joe Biden and House Republicans, who demand that any legislation authorizing support for Ukraine also include an array of border security provisions sought by immigration hawks. Yet Senate leaders have signaled that “negotiations are continuing in the right direction,” as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) put it this week.
The Baltic planners intend to dig “anti-mobility defensive installations” in the hope that their defense line would impede any future Russian ground invasion through Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
The Estonian Defense Ministry emphasized that “in peacetime, no explosives, cutting wires or other obstacles are placed on the border of Estonia,” but the Baltic defense line, a “network of bunkers, support points, and distribution lines,” would lay a foundation for a rapid enhancement of Baltic defenses in a crisis.
“To build the anti-mobility defensive installations is a carefully considered and thought-out project, the need of which stems from the current security situation,” Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur said Friday. “Russia’s war in Ukraine has shown that in addition to equipment, ammunition, and manpower, physical defensive installations on the border are also needed to defend Estonia from the first meter.”
Pevkur’s team unveiled the plans as NATO brass urged Western civilians to prepare their own survival kits.
“Not everything is going to be hunky dory in the next 20 years,” Dutch Admiral Rob Bauer, who chairs the NATO military committee, told reporters on Thursday. “I’m not saying it is going wrong tomorrow, but we have to realize it’s not a given that we are in peace. That’s why we are preparing for a conflict with Russia and the terror groups — if it comes to it, if they attack us. We’re not seeking any conflict. But if they attack us, we have to be ready.”
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Kundla, the Estonian colonel, suggested that the defense line might provide the wider alliance with more time to prepare.
“Also, the preparations that [Russia would] have to make to break through that line of defense are much more visible to us than what is the case now,” he said. “Perhaps the opponent’s preparation will also work as a forewarning for us.”
