RUSSIA PREPARING FOR WW3, PLANS TO DOUBLE TROOPS ON NATO BORDER: ESTONIA

Wed 14 February 2024:

Russia is increasing preparations for a possible military war with NATO within the next decade, and it intends to treble the number of troops stationed along its border with the Baltic states and Finland, Estonia’s intelligence chief claimed on Tuesday.

Russia is currently unwilling to take military action against the Western alliance in the short term, owing in part to the need to keep troops in Ukraine, Kaupo Rosin, director-general of the Estonian Foreign Intelligence Service, told reporters in Tallinn ahead of the release of Estonia’s national security threat report.

However, according to him, Moscow believes a military conflict with NATO is possible within the next 10 years.

“We will highly likely to see an increase in manpower, possibly doubling. We will see an increase in armed personnel carriers, tanks, and artillery systems over the coming years,” Rosin said, referring to the Baltic states of Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia, as well as the Finnish border.

Rosin is the latest European official to warn of a military expansionary threat to Baltic states from the Kremlin, calling for European states to start increasing their military spending and rearming.

Estonia and other Baltic states upped defense expenditure to more than 3% of GDP this year, exceeding NATO’s 2% benchmark.

He claimed that the chances of a military Russian strike “would be much higher than without any preparation.”

The Russian war on Ukraine has prompted Germany to permanently plan to base 4,800 troops in the Lithuanian region by 2027, which analysts argue is at risk of a Russian attack.

This will be Germany’s first permanent foreign military deployment since World War II.

Denmark’s Defense Minister Troels Lund Poulsen also warned last week that Russia could attack NATO within three to five years.

“Russia’s capacity to produce military equipment has increased tremendously,” Poulsen told local newspaper Jyllands-Posten.

It cannot be ruled out that within a three-to-five-year period, Moscow “will test Article 5 and NATO’s solidarity,” he added.

“That was not NATO’s assessment in 2023. This is new knowledge that is coming to the fore now,” he said.

Earlier on Monday, Norway’s intelligence service claimed that Russian forces are gaining an advantage in the war in Ukraine due to a greater number of soldiers and arms supplied by China, North Korea, and other countries.

Ukraine would need “extensive” Western military aid to turn things around, the head of the military intelligence unit Nils Andreas Stensones said at a press conference while presenting the intelligence annual report.

“In this war, Russia is currently in a stronger position than it was a year ago and is in the process of gaining the advantage,” Stensones told local reporters.

However, Rosin does not anticipate Russia to make significant progress in Ukraine before the presidential election next month, claiming that it will need to assemble a large number of military forces to fulfill its goal.

Last week, US President Donald Trump said that under his leadership, the US would not guarantee NATO allies from a Russian attack unless they spent enough money on defense.

Trump, who remains the Republican front-runner for the 2024 presidential election, was severely chastised for his remarks to Western military alliance commander Jens Stoltenberg, claiming that this “undermines all of our security.”

Rosin referred to Trump’s threat, saying, “Such statements are never helpful.”

Source: AA

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