Carl Bildt has said that any Russian aggression in the Baltic would immediately affect the security of Kaliningrad, referencing the concentration of NATO aircraft that has operated around the exclave over the past week.
Writing on Friday, the former Swedish prime minister and foreign minister, now co-chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations, said: “I’m sure Russia has carefully noted the advanced NATO presence in the vicinity of Kaliningrad the last few days. It certainly sent a powerful signal. Any Russian aggression in the Baltic area will immediately impact the security of Kaliningrad.”
He posted alongside a flight tracking image showing two NATO E-3A Sentry airborne early warning aircraft from Geilenkirchen, registered LX-N90444 and LX-N90445, operating over Lithuania and Poland, together with a Multinational MRTT Fleet A330 tanker out of Eindhoven and a United States Air Force KC-135R from RAF Mildenhall.
As we reported this week, allied aircraft have been massing over the Baltic region in numbers and combinations rarely seen outside a declared exercise.
The activity on 18 August involved around 25 aircraft drawn from several member states, operating from Poland and the Baltic states, in a package overseen by the United States. Alongside American and Norwegian fighters and a NATO E-3A, flight trackers logged an EA-37B Compass Call electronic attack aircraft, an ARTEMIS II intelligence platform, Polish Gulfstream G550s, multiple MRTT tankers, a Lithuanian Let L-410 and American AH-64E Apache helicopters, with Polish ground forces participating.
Allied Air Command confirmed the activity but said it could not disclose further detail for operational security reasons. A United States Air Forces in Europe official subsequently confirmed the training was scheduled to run across several days, and further flights followed on 19 and 20 August.
What distinguishes the past week from routine patrolling is the mix of capabilities. Refuelling, airborne command and control, intelligence gathering and electronic attack were airborne simultaneously, which is the shape of a strike package rather than a surveillance sortie.
The presence of the EA-37B in particular has drawn attention. The aircraft is designed to disrupt communications, radar and navigation systems, and the type flew its first operational mission from Souda Bay on 19 August focused on the electromagnetic environment around Kaliningrad.
Kaliningrad is the reason the Baltic sits where it does in NATO planning. The exclave has no land connection to the rest of Russia, hosts the headquarters of the Baltic Fleet at Baltiysk, and carries air defence and missile systems whose reach extends well into allied airspace. It also sits alongside the Suwalki gap, the stretch of Polish and Lithuanian border separating it from Belarus and forming the only land route between the Baltic states and the rest of the alliance.
Bildt’s point cuts in the direction less often stated. The exclave’s geography, usually discussed as a threat to allied reinforcement, also leaves it surrounded by NATO members and dependent on sea and air corridors the alliance could close.
The build-up follows a period of steadily rising activity, recently a Royal Air Force RC-135W Rivet Joint flew a patrol around the exclave on 7 August, returning to RAF Waddington after routing through the North Sea into the Baltic. An Italian Eurofighter operating under NATO command shot down a drone over north-eastern Latvia on 14 August, in an incident Latvia’s armed forces attributed to Russian electromagnetic warfare pushing the aircraft off course. Baltic Air Policing detachments have continued to intercept Russian aircraft transiting between mainland Russia and Kaliningrad, typically flying without transponders or filed flight plans.
Running alongside all of it is Lion Protector 26, the Joint Expeditionary Force exercise which began on 3 August and runs to 12 October across Northern Europe, the North Atlantic and the Baltic, and which opened with the escorted movement of allied military equipment into Latvian ports.
Capture of Kaliningrad would probably be NATO’s number one target in a Baltic conflict. It’s a piece of sovereign Russian territory that can be quickly isolated and Russia would have no means of retaking it once lost short of getting through all the Baltics states.
Russias complete inability to conduct maneuverer warfare and its inability to overcome fixed defences at anything other than a snails pace suggest it would not be unable to overcome the belt of fixed defences across the Baltics states before NATO reinforcements totally overwhelmed it.
In any fight with NATO the Russias will rely on a bight and hold strategy, hoping for rapid gains that it can hold on to and force NATO to take unacceptable levels of casualties to regain it.
Kaliningrad offers NATO the best option to reverse this tactic, grabbing the Kola Peninsula would be NATO’s second pressure point to apply. Ultimately any war between NATO no Russia can only end in a negotiated settlement or all out nuclear war. NATO has to be mindful of that in a response to any Russia action.