Whilst it might be nice to have a land bridge to Kaliningrad, I think other considerations come into play. As I remarked earlier, the Baltic States actually are NATO and I don't think Moscow wants to give the US, sorry NATO, an excuse to officially go postal.
The Baltic States themselves are no direct threat to Russia and any potential invading force would have to arrive by sea or air, giving Moscow plenty of time to respond over a limited front. Ukraine is a different matter entirely.
As regards your first paragraph Moscow's initial aim is to make NATO an irrelevance. The possibility of increasing arguments over Ukraine causing further divisions (already noticeable in the attitudes of parts of the German and French political establishments) can lead to greater divisiveness and (as postulated in the Baltics thread on ARRSE) potentially to a refusal to come to the support of the Baltic States.
I agree that is
an aim of Moscow, but I think they'll be happy in the short term for divisions to occur over Ukraine, which
isn't a NATO member. I don't think they'll expect NATO to fall apart sufficiently that a member invoking Article 5 will get a swift ignoring. Nor do I see it happening soon.
Should Russia successfully invade and occupy (parts of) Ukraine whilst NATO member countries stand by shouting "Come on, Ukraine" from the sidelines, then I think that the post-match hand-wringing will stiffen NATO's resolve as the "enemy" will now be at the gate again. Maybe we'll have promises of peace in our time and no more territorial gains ...
As regards your second paragraph, a free Ukraine itself is also not a direct physical threat to Russia. The Kremlin narrative on this point is misleading.
Agreed, but (there's always a but
)...
A free Ukraine is a threat to the regime in place in the Kremlin and their hold on the Russian peoples. That is the reason why control of Ukraine is so important to Moscow.
Again, it might be helpful to look at Moscow's historical perspective. Ukraine
is a threat if it effectively becomes a "Western" /NATO border state. And, IMO, mitigating that scenario is a major part of the Kremlin's game plan.
The golden rule of threat analysis is "never mind what people think will happen now, what is the potential for bad things happening", If anybody can correctly guess the state of the world in 10 years time and who the players are, good luck to them getting decent odds down at Paddy Power. But I guess most of us can play the What If game well enough to make a list if we set aside our assumptions and prejudices.
OOIC, why is a "free" Ukraine a threat to the Moscow regime? The Russians I know seem to be saddened by the deterioration of Russo-Ukrainian relations, as there used to be a fair degree of cooperation between the two nations. But I can't say I've picked up much in the way of mutterings from the ranks due to Ukraine's "freedom".
Agreed the Baltic States are not a threat to Russia, but they are a very valuable former part of the Tsarist and Soviet Empires that the current regime has stated that it wants to reconstruct.
Agreed. However, I don't think the Baltic States are down for incorporation in the short to medium term. And not until Russia can be confident that the end result will only be lots of finger-pointing and shouting from NATO.
