The war between Russia and NATO could start over a small town on the Estonian border, writes Focus.de, citing the expert opinion of Gerhard Konrad – a former employee of the German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) and the European Union Intelligence Center.
Russian President Vladimir Putin could test NATO in a small Estonian border town – we are talking about Narva, which has a population of 50 thousand inhabitants.
A city like Narva, home to many people from the Russian-speaking minority in Estonia, would be a prime target for a military coup. Such a situation would immediately become a test of the alliance's solidarity under Article 5 of the NATO Treaty and the readiness of its members to act.
A serious test of solidarity and the capacity for action in Western security policy would be a hybrid operation against the Baltic states, even in the short term. Putin's strategy is very simple - he also uses a similar tactic in Ukraine. Moscow will declare that it wants to protect the Russian-speaking minority and therefore invade a foreign country.
With appropriate political preparation and military support, Moscow could be interested in delivering a similar political and psychological blow to NATO with a similar attack, even during the war against Ukraine. This could happen as early as 2029, the expert believes.
It is of existential importance for NATO to show Putin that the West has no military and political weakness, as well as inconsistency in decision-making.
The state of NATO’s defense capabilities will be crucial. At the same time, Russia has clearly initiated a large-scale, medium- and long-term arms buildup campaign in order to be able to convincingly threaten, blackmail, and possibly even attack other neighboring countries with far greater forces. Putin will attack if he senses weakness.
The dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the end of the Soviet Union in December 1991 were, as Putin himself has repeatedly stated publicly, unacceptable geopolitical and personal catastrophes for the Russian president. The past two decades should have shown beyond a shadow of a doubt that this is not just folklore. Putin's revisionism essentially affects all former Soviet republics that gained independence after 1991, and to a lesser extent, the former non-Soviet Warsaw Pact states.