For international locations on Europe’s easternmost flank, Russia is a gift and looming risk — and they’re making ready in case Moscow as soon as once more decides to check Nato’s defensive resolve.
With Russia strengthening its army presence within the area and US dedication to the European defence pact wavering, the alliance and its members are racing to construct defences.
Nations are bringing again conscription, buying extra weaponry and fortifying their borders. Finland has accelerated development of a 200km fence and boosted surveillance and patrols.
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are constructing a Baltic defence line made up of concrete bunkers and anti-tank ditches alongside a 600-mile stretch of border with Russia and its ally Belarus — essentially the most uncovered a part of Nato’s jap frontier.
Lithuania is especially weak. It’s bordered to the south by the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad and the Suwalki hole — the one territory connecting the Baltic states to the remainder of Nato.
Poland is developing €2.3bn price of defences to kind an ‘East Defend’ — the biggest try to strengthen the nation’s jap border since 1945.
To its east, Ukraine illustrates the devastation wrought when Russia invades.
The result there’ll decide what Moscow does subsequent, warns ex-Nato head Anders Fogh Rasmussen. ‘If Putin will get any success in Ukraine, he gained’t cease there.’