Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania signed an agreement in January to create a joint Baltic defense line against future Russian attacks. Last week, Lithuania announced it had deployed mines and anti-tank obstacles such as metal “hedgehogs” and concrete “dragon’s teeth” on bridges connecting the nation to Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave. Lithuania plans further deployments of counter-mobility equipment around the nation, including at three airports.
Leaders in the region worry that Russia, with its economy on a war footing and the obvious insufficiency of the sanctions regime against it, will reconstitute its military forces far more quickly than the rosy projections some American intelligence sources promoted in early 2023. Recent Estonian intelligence estimates see Russian looking to station 40,000 troops near their border as soon as it is able.
Putin’s ramped-up war machine, alongside his palpable appetite for further territorial conquests, has convinced NATO nations with the misfortune of abutting Russia that there is no time to lose.
The geographic reality of the Baltic nations, connected via land to the rest of NATO only via the 65-mile long Suwalki Gap on the Lithuanian-Polish border, leads many to believe they are the logical place for Putin to strike if he decides to invade a NATO member state.
Although the risk should not be understated, such an invasion would be challenging. Much of the Baltics’ borders with Russia and client state Belarus consists of swamps, bogs, lakes, rivers and thick forests, obstacles that would surely slow a Belarusian or Russian advance.
Furthermore, Finland and Sweden’s accession to NATO has improved Baltic security. Defending and reinforcing the Baltic states in the event of a future war would be far easier now than it would have been just a couple of years ago.
The ongoing build-out of the Baltic states’ defense line is the next iteration in their beefed-up border security. It reflects a grim recognition that allowing Russia to seize any of your territory and citizens comes at a considerable humanitarian and physical cost. Falling back to buy time is no longer a feasible option. The further east Russian forces can be stopped, the better.
The Baltics have been upgrading their border infrastructure since well before Putin’s second invasion of Ukraine. Persistent smuggling concerns and the hybrid warfare strategy utilizing migrants by Putin and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko spurred an ongoing installation of new fences, razor wire, cameras and sensors along the border beginning in 2017.
The Baltic defense line will augment these efforts, helping to slow any future ground assaults by Russian or Belarusian troops. In practice, this means amassing obstacles, reinforcing existing fences, digging ditches and building defensive bunkers.
By investing in defense, Lithuania is looking to ensure that Putin recognizes the country does not merely have pointy teeth but can breathe fire as well. Last month, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda stated he believed the country would look to further increase defense spending to beyond its current 3 percent of GDP.
Likewise, Estonia has ramped up its spending to 3.43 percent and Latvia to 3.15 percent, the second- and fourth-highest defense spending totals in NATO on a per GDP basis.
The Baltic allies are using this money to invest in expensive but critically important deep-strike capabilities, which have proven so effective in the ongoing war in Ukraine. For instance, in a future conflict, St. Petersburg would be well within the range of an ATACMS guided missile fired from Estonian territory. The Baltic nations want this to factor into the Kremlin’s thinking, making the cost of an attack prohibitively high.
For the Baltics, survival means most importantly deterring Russian aggression through NATO. If, in the worst-case scenario, deterrence fails, the necessity is to survive long enough to inflict substantial damage on Russia while pushing invaders out with the help of allied reinforcements. In July, an Estonian military official said he believed the nation could hold out for two weeks waiting for reinforcements from NATO allies.
The Baltic defense line is meant to serve a dual purpose: buttressing NATO deterrence in peacetime, while in wartime limiting the maneuverability and speed of advancing Russian ground forces to hold out longer for allied reinforcements.
Unlike a decade ago, NATO allies now have boots on the ground in the Baltic region. Germany is increasing its permanent presence in Lithuania to a brigade consisting of 4,800 troops by 2027. A multinational battalion in Latvia, led by Canada, is similarly being upgraded to a brigade, albeit on a “persistently deployed” basis rather than a permanent one. The U.K. holds a brigade at high readiness at home to be quickly deployed to augment the enhanced forward presence battalion based in Estonia.
The Baltic states recognize that Putin and his ilk are unlikely to give up on their imperial designs. These small nations are therefore coolly but doggedly taking steps to bolster deterrence. Russia might just lose its appetite if the entree looks nearly impossible to digest.
Daniel Kochis is a senior fellow in the Center on Europe and Eurasia at the Hudson Institute.