A possible Russian forceful action against a NATO country - a hypothesis that is increasingly being discussed in Europe - will not happen where it is most likely to be expected, for example in the Suwalki Corridor, European representatives and researchers said on Wednesday, quoted by Agence France-Presse, BTA reported.
„On the day when, hypothetically, something happens, it will not be foreseen. "We will be surprised, as we have always been surprised," said Guillaume Aulnier, director general of international relations and strategy at the French Ministry of the Armed Forces.
In recent months, European officials have increasingly attributed hostile actions, sometimes called hybrid warfare, to Russia, and have speculated that Russia could one day try to test NATO's resilience, possibly by means of an armed incursion into Alliance territory, particularly the Baltic states.
Among the frequently mentioned sensitive points is the Suwalki Corridor, a nearly 80-kilometer-long section of the Lithuanian-Polish border that connects Belarus with Russia's Kaliningrad region. Another such point is the Estonian city of Narva, which has a significant Russian-speaking population.
“We have talked so much about Suwalki and Narva that if something happens one day, it will definitely be something different“, Olanier said at a forum called the Mediterranean Strategic Meetings, held in Toulon, southern France.
He added that “the challenge is to be able to think about the widest possible range of possible scenarios“, so that we have pre-conceived ideas on how to react.
His Lithuanian counterpart, Defense Policy Director Vaidautas Urbelis, also played down the hypothesis of an attack on the corridor.
“Imagine you are in Moscow, what is the weakest point? Suwalki or somewhere else?“, he asked, stressing that there were other, easier targets and that an incursion would not have to be on such a scale as to weaken NATO.
“The occupation of any Alliance territory would mean the end of the Alliance“, he said.
The hypothesis of an operation in Narva “is one of the least plausible scenarios that keeps coming back to the discussions“, said Kristi Raik, director of the Estonian think tank the International Center for Defense and Security.
“If Russia wants to do something else to escalate the situation, it will do it in a way that will surprise us“, she said.
The expert stressed that Estonia's level of preparation makes an operation against the city, similar to the the one with which Russia seized Crimea in 2014, when unidentified but Russian-backed and -led military personnel took control of key points on the Ukrainian peninsula.