The Baltic Alarm: Why Europe Must Listen to Its Eastern Frontier

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While the world watches Ukraine’s grinding defensive struggle, a parallel crisis is building along NATO’s northeastern edge. The Baltic states, Poland, and Finland are rearming at a pace unseen since the Cold War — not against a theoretical threat, but against one their leaders describe as imminent and inevitable.

Moscow’s territorial demands have only hardened. On December 11, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov revived Russia’s December 2021 ultimatums as his baseline for any security arrangement — demands that would require NATO to withdraw all forces and weapons from every country that joined after 1997, effectively dismantling the alliance’s eastern presence. The Kremlin first issued these demands two months before invading Ukraine. That Lavrov is reiterating them now signals how little Russia’s war aims have moderated.

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Putin’s notion of “historical lands” is deliberately boundless. He openly denies Ukrainian statehood — “all of Ukraine is ours,” he told an economic forum this summer — but his revisionism extends far beyond Kyiv. In 2022, he equated the Soviet Union with “historical Russia,” a formulation that encompasses not just Ukraine but the Baltic republics, Finland, Poland, Moldova, the Caucasus, and Central Asia.

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Open warfare against NATO has not begun, but a shadow conflict is well advanced. Russian sabotage, electronic jamming, and military provocations have intensified sharply throughout 2025, with the Baltic Sea as the primary arena.

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