A few years ago, the scenario, which Canadian and other NATO troops were rehearsed in Latvia last week, and unthinkable – even alerted for the inexperienced eye.
On a training area that was tuned in winter, a few dozen kilometers outside of Riga, around 3,400 soldiers from 14 nations under the brigade tour of a Canadian commander practiced a last defense of Latvian capital.
The strong scenario opened 30 days in a hypothetical invasion of the Baltic State by a warlike neighbor with an unforgettable, wrong name.
Everyone knew that “the enemy” was Russia, but nobody spoke the name.
The exercise developed in the same week, such as the relationships between the United States and Ukraine, after a ugly, equipped scream match with President Donald Trump, the Vice President JD Vance and the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office.
The idea that Washington in Latvia is moved closer to Moscow’s orbit. The country has observed how Russian bases in the Baltic Sea – once emptied because of the Ukrainian secretary of troops and equipment – have now been refilled and resumed.
All three Baltic states – Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania – have increased the attachment of their borders to Russia. But it is nervous as whether the United States would honor the Holy Grail of the NATO contract, Article 5, who would like to attack a member, is an attack on everyone.
The Latvian Defense Minister Andris Spruds shared CBC News in a recently exclusive interview that his country would like to see more NATO troops on site and more military devices in the tiny nation for the necessary reinforcements that would be brought in during a crisis.
“There is space and space for even (larger) and greater presence,” said Spruds in an interview that was broadcast on Saturday at CBC Radio The house.
“We have to remember that the Latvian border is the outer border of the European Union and NATO. So it’s not just about protecting Latvia, protecting the region. It is about protecting the eastern flank, but also about protecting NATO and EU allies.”
The western military alliance organized Latvia’s defense under a multinational department to which the Canadian brigade belongs. The division is managed by Danish-Maj.-Generia. Jette Albinus, who recently announced CBC News in an interview, that a ceasefire – or a complete peace settlement in Ukraine – would enable Russia to contact the Baltic region.
Mid -February. The Danish Institute for International Studies published a report in which Russia warn that it should probably continue its military structure in both the Baltic and Arctic regions.
Albinus says that the secret service in Denmark has investigated that peace in Ukraine – although welcome and necessary – would increase the level of threat to the border with the Baltic States.
“There is no doubt … that the threat will increase here,” said Albinus.
“It only lets me set up my sleeves and prepare me even better … they have to show them that they are ready to fight and defend Latvia and the Baltikes.”
Moving troops in a crisis
The question that the NATO military planner has followed since the first use of the alliance troops in the Baltic Sea in 2017 is whether the quota could be reinforced and reproduced in a crisis.
The current plan for defense in Latvia sees Canada, Denmark and Sweden into the country. The question is: Can you get there with Russian U boats in the Baltic Sea and maybe closed the airspace?
Albinus said she was more confident that the sea grid is now being opened because Sweden and Finland have joined NATO.
There are also big plans to strengthen the Baltices over the rail system, other allied commanders said.
Colonel Henrik Rosdahl, the commander of the Swedish mechanized battalion, which is part of the Canadian brigade, said his focus was on ensuring that the troops already used can hold and hold back in the event of an invasion.
However, he said Sweden – like Canada – be in the process of rebuilding his army.
“Am I confident? I would say it,” Rosdahl told CBC News. “We will have problems to bring a great force (to Latvia) because we build our national defense forces while we are talking.”
But the question of reinforcements added that the political and military leadership of his country was better positioned to answer.
The commander of the Canadian army, Lieutenant General Mike Wright, who was for the exercise in Latvia, said that he was “satisfied” with the preparation of the Canadian brigade, and found that the Germans have a brigade in Lithuania and that Great Britain has their own in Estonia.
“We are not alone,” said Wright. “We are part of this deterrent and collective defense in the eastern flank of NATO.”
Last year, the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) examined what a war would look like in Baltics and how it would look geopolitically.
The report came to the conclusion that Russia could also make quick profits in the Baltic region with NATO reinforcements, and the Kremlin could fall back on blackmail within three days after the opening of the hostility: “NATO that every attempt to resume the new Baltic Oblasts in Russia triggered a nuclear reaction”.
In view of the threats of the Trump government to acquire Greenland “one or the other” and possibly annexate Canada through economic violence, the CEPA scenario-like the war game in Latvia seems to have not been very far.
