Summary and Key Points: Despite Russia’s aggressive stance, it remains unlikely that Moscow will invade the Baltic countries—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—due to their NATO membership and the ironclad guarantee of collective defense under Article 5.
-Instead, Russia is likely to rely on hybrid-warfare methods, including cyberattacks, propaganda, sabotage of infrastructure, covert operations, and paramilitary actions, to destabilize and disrupt NATO without triggering a full-scale military response.
-NATO must remain vigilant, bolstering cyber defenses and infrastructure security while maintaining credible deterrence measures.
-Although the hybrid threat is serious, NATO’s commitment to collective defense significantly diminishes the likelihood of direct Russian military aggression against member states.
Why Russia Won’t Risk a Direct Attack on NATO’s Baltic States
Given the Kremlin’s revanchist ambitions, which Russia has made abundantly clear during the ongoing war in Ukraine, the question of the moment is whether Moscow would invade the Baltic countries.
But there is one significant reason to believe that Russia wouldn’t risk an outright attack elsewhere in Europe: the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
All the Baltic countries—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—are NATO members. Under Article 5 of the NATO treaty, an attack on one member is considered an attack on all. It would trigger a collective military response from every other NATO member. Article 5 is the bedrock of the NATO alliance, and it is ironclad.
Not only would a direct attack on one or all of the Baltic countries trigger a large-scale response from the other NATO allies, but it would also lead to extreme economic sanctions on Russia, making the country’s international isolation even more profound and enduring. Given the high cost of an attack on the Baltics, such an action should be highly unattractive for Russia.
Nor is there any precedent for such an attack: Neither the Soviet Union nor Russia has ever risked a direct military confrontation with any NATO member.
The Hybrid Option
Rather than a direct attack on any of the Baltic countries, or indeed against any other NATO member, Russia would be much more likely to turn to hybrid-warfare tactics in an effort to foment chaos and instability in the alliance. In fact, Russia is already doing so in certain ways.
Given Russia’s limited options for a direct military confrontation with the NATO alliance, the measures it can turn to that fall short of the threshold for war include hacking, disinformation and propaganda campaigns on social media, and other efforts to manipulate public opinion.
The recent spate of ruptures of communications cables in the Baltic Sea connecting countries such as Germany, Sweden, and Denmark, are another example of methods that are accessible to Russia. Though in some cases these incidents are attributed to accidental anchor-towing along the seabed by unwitting ship captains, that explanation seems unlikely.
Other purported plans would aim to disrupt the United States and the United Kingdom. A recent investigation uncovered an alleged plot by Kremlin operatives to down cargo aircraft with American and British destinations as a kind of “shot across the bow” for those countries to end their military support for Ukraine.
As a part of that campaign, Russian operatives are believed to have packed explosives disguised as massage guns on those planes, timed to explode in mid-air. Thanks to flight delays, however, the packages caught fire while on the tarmac awaiting loading, rather than during flight.
In Estonia in 2007, widespread cyberattacks targeted government and financial networks and were an early warning of how far Russia would be willing to go in the lead-up to war, or as part of a hybrid strategy that falls short of all-out war. Additionally, during the 2016 American presidential election, widespread misinformation campaigns attempted to sway public opinion in order to influence the election and foment civil unrest.
Covert military or paramilitary operations could be another way short of war for Russia to exert pressure on NATO allies. The takeover of Crimea in 2014 involved uniformed soldiers without insignia—they were clearly Russian military personnel—taking control of the Ukrainian peninsula.
Russia also used hybrid measures in Eastern Ukraine, blending conventional and irregular forces to support pro-Russian separatists there.
Looking Ahead
Given the increasingly digital nature of modern life, cyber intrusions of varying impact should be expected. Attacks on NATO member-state energy infrastructure, transportation networks, and communications systems, would all inflict panic and paralysis on the public, without necessarily being a direct and clearly attributable military strike.
In the case of its immediate neighbors, Russia could use separatist forces, local partisans or militias, as well as mercenaries or perhaps unmarked troops to execute operations that do not meet the threshold of a conventional conflict, but nonetheless further Moscow’s aims in its near-abroad.
Postscript
Though destabilization provoked by Russia via hybrid-warfare tactics is a real and significant threat, it does not carry the same destructive potential as an outright attack on a member of the NATO alliance. Thanks to NATO’s defensive, networked, and credible defense systems, a direct attack is unlikely.
Given the Trump administration’s interest in pivoting to Asia to face the threat posed by China over Taiwan, NATO should be vigilant and take a clear-eyed look at what needs to be done to minimize risks: strengthening cyber capabilities, and making it clear that disruptions to communications, transportation, or other infrastructure would be met with costly retaliation.
A clear and rapid response to nefarious Russian actions, combined with increased surveillance and cooperation among allies, would minimize the threat and reduce the risk of overt military action or aggression.
About the Author: Caleb Larson
Caleb Larson is an American multiformat journalist based in Berlin, Germany. His work covers the intersection of conflict and society, focusing on American foreign policy and European security. He has reported from Germany, Russia, and the United States. Most recently, he covered the war in Ukraine, reporting extensively on the war’s shifting battle lines from Donbas and writing on the war’s civilian and humanitarian toll. Previously, he worked as a Defense Reporter for POLITICO Europe. You can follow his latest work on X.
