Paul
Goble
Staunton, May 31 – It is always
risky to derive intentions from capacities, but Moscow’s moves to create new
military units opposite the Baltic states suggests that the Kremlin now has the
capacity to invade Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, something that seems absurd
to the West but may not to those who live in Vladimir Putin’s “alternate
reality.”
In a commentary in today’s “Postimees,”
Vadim Shtepa, a Karelian regionalist now living in exile in Estonia, says that
20 years ago it would have appeared ridiculous to talk about any Russian
invasion of the Baltic countries. Russia accepted their independence and sought
to develop good relations (rus.postimees.ee/3715273/ugrozhajut-li-rossijskie-tanki-stranam-baltii).
But today, he says,
it appears “history is repeating itself. Putin’s Russia ever more conceives of
itself as the literal continuation of the USSR with that state’s attempts to
dictate its will to other countries. And if these countries conduct an
independent policy, they aren’t protected from suffering Russian military invasions,”
be in Prague in 1968 or Ukraine now.
And this Soviet restorationism is
not just at the level of rhetoric but also at the level of institutional
practice. In 2015, Moscow recreated the
First Guards Tank Army, which had existed in the USSR between 1943 and 1991 and
in the Russian forces until 1999. That force is clearly available for use
against the Baltic countries.
On May 11, Shtepa notes, Moscow’s
Zvezda television channel reported that “the new unit is capable of levelling
the threat from the side of the Balti countries,” adding that “the new Russian
divisions will become the hammer which will crush any defense” they might think
to offer.
This army includes, according to
Russian officials, “no fewer than 500 to 600 tanks, 600 to 800 armored personal
carriers, 300 to 400 pieces of field artillery, and 35,000 to 50,000 soldiers.”
More, these officials say that it is being equipped with the most modern
versions of all weapons Moscow now has.
Russian writers like Viktor
Murakhovsky have sought to reassure the Baltic people that they have nothing to
fear from this division as it is primarily located near Moscow (rus.postimees.ee/3690987/voennyj-jekspert-rossijskaja-tankovaja-armija-ne-ugrozhaet-jestonii).
But another Russian expert has pointed out that it could be moved forward to
the Baltic borders very quickly if the Kremlin decided to act (expert.ru/2016/05/4/tri-novyih-divizii-protiv-nato/).
And as Aleksandr Golts of “Yezhednevny
zhurnal” has put it: Moscow has “really approached to a turning point in its
relations with the surrounding world. Now, no one in the West discusses whether
Russia has aggressive intentions; instead, all discuss how it will realize
these plans.”
And Golts adds: many Russian
commanders say that as soon as it is organized, “the first guards tank army
will take the Baltics.” Other experts based in the West concur and point to
some the special units that have been created within that army which would be
of use only in an aggressive campaign (svoboda.org/content/article/27585524.html,
citing mk.ru/politics/2016/02/23/v-rossiyskoy-armii-poyavilsya-novyy-specnaz-shturmovye-sapery.html).
And the creation of that Russian
army is not the only such institutional change in Russian military forces:
Earlier this month, Russian commanders announced the formation of a new army
corps in Kaliningrad. It is under the command of Maj.Gen.Yury Yarovitsky who
earlier was deputy chief of staff of the first guards tank army (lenta.ru/news/2016/05/12/corps/).
Those who dismiss the possibility of
a Russian move against the Baltic countries often cite the fact that the three
are members of NATO. For them, such an invasion is as impossible as was the Anschluss
of Crimea three years ago. And they forget the conclusion of some that the West
is not “prepared to die for Narva” (svoboda.org/content/article/26717745.html).
“From a rational point of view,”
Shtepa says, any Russian invasion would be ridiculous, especially now that
there is a trip wire of NATO forces in the three Baltic countries. But
rationality may not be in play here. As Angela Merkel has pointed out, Putin
lives in “a different reality” and apparently a majority of Russians do as
well.
And thus tragedies are possible, he
suggests. Years ago, Yevgeny Yevtushenko asked in a poem “Do the Russians want
war?” Then, no one did, but today, Shtepa points out, “the Russian hurrah
patriotic publicists answer this question in the affirmative: ‘Russia is ready
for the coming cataclysms, for a Major War.’”
Given such attitudes, one can only
assume that the Kremlin is prepared to launch one, even if when and where
remain unclear – and the only reasonable approach is to keep track of Russia’s
development of its capacities as an indication of what it is thinking about now
and may very well do, however “absurd” that may be.
