Finland
pekka.toveri@eduskunta.fi
Russian aggression in Ukraine has shown that Russia is willing and able to use every possible means to break all existing international agreements and rules to protect its national interests; or rather, to protect the interests of Mr. Putin and his siloviks. Nevertheless, the last 14 months have not been good for Russia. The war in Ukraine is becoming increasingly costly both in manpower and materiel, and the Russian economy is suffering. The West has found unity in supporting Ukraine and although the support is sometimes slow to arrive, it is enough to guarantee that Ukraine will not fall. The geostrategic situation in the Baltic Sea Region became very unfavourable to Russia when Finland joined NATO at the beginning of April, and Sweden will most likely follow within a year.
The Baltic Sea is still a very important maritime trade route for Russia, and the defence of St. Petersburg is vital for the country. With Finland joining NATO, the Baltic Sea is practically becoming NATO´s “inner lake”, something that is very hard for the Kremlin to swallow. Putin undoubtedly wants to change the situation to one more favourable to Russia in the long term, but Russia’s means to change the situation are very few. Because of the attack on Ukraine, Russia has lost practically all means to put diplomatic or economic pressure on the Baltic Rim States. Russia used its energy weapon last winter, which turned out to be a weak tool and did not provide any leverage with the West.
The possibility of using the threat of military force has also been lost, at least for a while. Russia´s Army, Airborne Forces and Marines are tied up in Ukraine and suffering huge losses. It will require 5-10 years after the fighting ends to rebuild these forces. Russia´s Air Force and Navy are more intact and have suffered light losses, but they have proved to be badly trained and their technology is generally inferior to Western military technology. The loss of cruiser Moskva, the flag ship of Russia´s Black Sea Navy, was a painful reminder of the vulnerability of a major Russian warship in a restricted body of water against developed anti-ship missiles. Considering Russia’s difficult geostrategic situation and the weakness of its armed forces, the Kremlin probably does not want to have a military confrontation with NATO in the Baltic Sea Region for at least a decade.
Still, Russia has other tricks up its sleeve. Even though it is militarily inferior at the moment, the country has shown great skill in using other methods to put pressure on its adversaries. Russia is skilled in hybrid warfare, and as the latest leaked documents show, it had formulated plans to weaken the Baltic States and undermine NATO´s integrity in the Baltic Sea Region before the attack on Ukraine. In the last decade, Russia has conducted several assassinations, info-operations, cyber-attacks and even sabotage attacks against ammunition storage facilities in the Czech Republic and Bulgaria. The West has been quite unsuccessful in countering these activities, so it is very probable that Russia will continue to use hybrid warfare and even increase its efforts to weaken the NATO Alliance and interfere with its member states’ internal mechanisms.
While Putin´s possibilities to weaken NATO and Baltic Rim States are still limited, he seeks to deny Western superiority in the area, destabilize the situation and cause harm to his opponents. In Baltic Sea Region, maritime traffic is a great vulnerability that Russia can hit. Maritime traffic is critical to all the Baltic Rim States and the region is one of the busiest shipping areas in the world. Disrupting marine transit would very quickly cause great economic losses and harm the security of supply of the Baltic Rim countries.
Russia has a long history of disrupting Ukraine´s vessel movement in the Black Sea and the methods it has employed are varied. They have ranged from declaring large shooting areas on trade routes to GPS jamming and spoofing in order to disrupt navigation. Russia has conducted boarding and inspections of Ukrainian ships “in order to prevent terrorism”, causing considerable delays to the ships. The Russian Navy has dropped floating mines in shipping routes causing hazards to vessels. A series of cyber-attacks against the IT-networks of harbours and shipping lines was determined to be Russian in origin. Putin has employed these methods and could continue to do so, all while staying under NATO’s Article V threshold and causing huge economic losses to the Baltic Rim States.
To prevent these kinds of attacks, the Baltic Rim States need to cooperate very closely with one another as well as with NATO and the EU. We need to recognize the varied possible threats, create plans and capabilities to prevent the attacks, and minimize possible damage. Russia may be militarily weak, but it is still a hybrid threat to all of us.