A member of the Estonian Defense Forces sits next to a large-caliber machine gun during the Spring Storm military exercises by Estonian and allied NATO forces near Kadrina, Estonia, on May 19. JAAP ARRIENS/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
For decades, Russia amassed the bulk of its advanced military forces in the so-called Western Military District, hunkered down on NATO’s borders, including near the Baltic States. Now, many of those forces have been thrown into the meat grinder in Ukraine, where Russia’s army has suffered devastating losses that could take decades to rebuild.
But even as the war drags on in Ukraine, Russia plans to rebuild its forces facing its new and expanded frontiers with NATO, according to interviews with multiple Eastern European defense and military officials. Officials in Washington may be sanguine about the longer-term threat from a Russia that has sowed Ukrainian fields with conscript bodies, but in Eastern Europe, and especially the Baltics, things still look dicey. Russia could fully reconstitute the number of troops facing the Baltic countries in a matter of two months to two years, these officials said, posing a new threat of a Russia-NATO military showdown even if the conflict in Ukraine isn’t resolved.
“Russia has plans to increase considerably the number of forces behind the Estonian and Latvian borders,” said Tuuli Duneton, undersecretary for defense policy at the Estonian Ministry of Defense. “According to our assessments, Russia is going to be able to reconstitute its forces in two years,” with the potential to launch a limited incursion against NATO, she said.
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