Russia may not stop with Ukraine – NATO looks to its weakest link
NEXT TARGET?
Crucial for the Baltics is the land link between Kaliningrad and Belarus. Called the Suwalki Gap, its seizure would cut the Baltic states off.
"Putin could quickly seize the Suwalki Gap," said Domroese, the retired German general, adding this will not happen today or tomorrow, "but it could happen in a few years."
Putin's recent actions have not all been predictable. He put Russia's nuclear forces on high alert on Feb. 28, with rhetoric that Stoltenberg told Reuters is "dangerous, it's reckless."
The Kremlin did not respond to a request for comment. Putin says Russia's concerns expressed over three decades about NATO's expansion were dismissed by the West, and post-Soviet Russia was humiliated after the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union.
He says NATO, as an instrument of the United States, was building up its military on Ukraine's territory in a way that threatened Russia.
On March 11, Russia's Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu told Putin the West was beefing up military forces close to Russia's Western borders. Putin asked Shoigu to prepare a report on how to respond.
Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelinskiy has warned that the Baltic states will be Russia's next target. The Baltic Sea is a large and busy shipping market for containers and other cargo, connecting Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Russia with the rest of the world.
Hours after Russian missiles first struck Ukrainian cities on Feb. 24, German naval commander Terje Schmitt-Eliassen received notice to sail five warships under his command to the former Soviet Republic of Latvia to help protect the most vulnerable part of NATO's eastern flank.
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