NATO forces are holding major military ‘activities’ in the Baltic Sea near Kaliningrad, as a show of force to show Putin that NATO is prepared for an attack or invasion.

So what’s going on, and why is Putin doing this?

Kaliningrad is Russian territory, a small Baltic coast country of 1 million Russians sandwiched between Lithuania and Poland, both of which are EU and NATO countries. It is heavily militarised and serves as the base for Russia’s Baltic Fleet. But it has no direct territorial link with Russia, and all supplies have to go through Lithuania, an obvious choke-point.

Why is Putin trying to escalate, even as he is losing the war against Ukraine?

Because if Putin can escalate his war into a Russia- Nato war, he can say to the Russian people that NATO is attacking Russia, and that this was NATO’s plan all along, and that Ukraine is just a front for NATO aggression. He can then declare war, military control, and call up a million Russian conscripts to fight NATO’s ‘aggression’.

So far NATO has refused to play Putin’s game-plan, and avoided military responses to Russia’s increasingly blatant attacks on NATO countries and allies, and these current exercises are more of the same - a warning that Putin can expect full resistance if/when he makes a move.

I don’t think this will stop Putin, because he has run out of personal choices; Ukraine (with substantial European help) is effectively demolishing the Russian economy, making Russian-occupied territories unliveable, and making Putin’s political (and perhaps personal) life expectancy shorter by the day.

I therefore expect Putin to act out of desperation, a last roll of the dice, and if he does, it will be very soon because he is unlikely to last the coming Russian winter of fuel and food shortages and battlefield losses.

My own view, for what it’s worth, is that NATO now needs to show that it will not just respond proportionately to whatever Russia tries to do in the Baltic, but will respond disproportionally with overwhelming force.

What would such a response look like?

Ukraine has created the game plan in Crimea; destroy the entire military, energy, transit and communications infrastructure of Kaliningrad, ideally using Ukrainian drone and missile techniques, ending it’s status as Russia’s military and naval base, but without attacks in Russia’s mainland territory itself. This denies Putin’s storyline of NATO troops in Russia, and minimises the ever-present threat of Russian nuclear escalation.

Whatever happens, I think this will escalate before this winter.

Read this ‘Unmasking Russia’ repost below for more info. And worth watching closely for what happens next!