Patrol density along Lithuania’s border with Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave has practically doubled since soldiers joined the border guards there in early October. Lithuanian Armed Forces Commander Raimundas Vaikšnoras told LRT this in an interview. He linked the deployment to provocations and to what he described as Russian preparations for a large-scale mobilization.
Kaliningrad is a piece of Russia wedged between Lithuania and Poland on the Baltic Sea. Lithuanian Defense Minister Robertas Kaunas said people would naturally flee a Russian mobilization. Earlier, on 11 August, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Russia planned to mobilize several hundred thousand people by the end of 2026, after its parliamentary vote.
Commander: Russia lacks troops for a breakthrough
Vaikšnoras said Russia is struggling in Ukraine and needs to fill gaps in its capabilities. Moscow would probably like a breakthrough but lacks people, he added. In July, Ukraine’s Foreign Intelligence Service estimated that Russia had signed about as many new military contracts this year as it had lost troops.
He also cited provocations. In Latvia, armed men recently tried to push migrants across the border, he noted, leaving open whether they were bandits or criminals. Belarusian ruler Alyaksandr Lukashenka denies everything, he added. On 6 October, Latvian Interior Minister Jānis Dombrava wrote that the escorts stood on the Belarusian side, were armed, and threatened Latvian soldiers.
Mission extended to mid-November
Lithuania decided to send troops after that Latvian incident. On 7 October, Interior Minister Martynas Katelynas asked Defense Minister Kaunas for troops to help the State Border Guard Service. Kaunas then approved up to 100 soldiers until 16 October, LRT reported.
On 16 October, Kaunas extended the mission to mid-November at Katelynas’s request. The Defense Ministry cited possible flows of people fleeing Kaliningrad and related illegal border crossings. It also said military intelligence sees no significant changes in military activity in Kaliningrad. Katelynas had earlier called the step preventive, BNS noted. He cited public, non-intelligence reports of a call-up planned after Russia’s parliamentary elections and said the threat level at the border had not risen.
Commander doubts Moscow’s intentions
Vaikšnoras said Russia and Belarus may not want open incidents that leave their traces right now. He added that he does not believe in their good intentions. He noted it has been said publicly that Russia’s capability in Kaliningrad is sharply reduced, because most of its forces are committed to Ukraine. Back in June 2025, Poland’s foreign minister said that, from what he knew, Russia had withdrawn a large part of its troops from the exclave.
Instead, hybrid attacks and sabotage that cannot be traced at once will probably continue, Vaikšnoras said. LRT noted the interview took place before a Ukrainian drone crashed in Pasvalys district on Sunday and before an attempted arson at premises used by SpaceX in Vilnius.
Latvia has called for a European Union-wide ban on tourist visas for Russian citizens, reopening a dispute between member states over border security, freedom of movement and the treatment of Russian nationals during Moscow’s continuing war against Ukraine.
Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs is pressing Brussels and other European capitals to adopt a common approach, arguing that continued visa issuance by some Schengen countries weakens restrictions imposed by states bordering Russia.
His intervention comes amid growing concerns over suspected Russian sabotage, espionage and other hostile activities across Europe. The Latvian government regards restrictions on non-essential travel as an additional measure to reduce potential security risks.
According to details of the Latvian proposal, Kulbergs has criticised the continued issuance of tourist visas by countries including France, Italy and Spain, maintaining that the consequences extend beyond the states granting entry.
The proposal would go considerably further than the restrictions already introduced by the EU since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
A divided European visa policy
The European Union suspended its visa facilitation agreement with Russia in September 2022, ending the preferential conditions previously available to Russian applicants.
The Council’s original decision introduced more demanding documentation requirements, higher application fees and stricter scrutiny, but it did not prohibit Russian citizens from obtaining short-stay visas.
National authorities therefore retained considerable discretion when assessing applications, subject to common Schengen rules.
The EU has also agreed a legal basis for restrictions targeting Russian military personnel and former combatants involved in the invasion of Ukraine, although implementation requires further measures.
Latvia argues that these steps remain insufficient because ordinary tourist visas continue to be available through some European consulates.
Once admitted to the Schengen area, a visitor can generally travel between participating countries without routine internal border checks. This creates difficulties for governments seeking to enforce stricter national entry policies.
Security concerns on the eastern border
Latvia shares borders with Russia and Belarus and has repeatedly warned that Moscow’s activities present risks extending beyond conventional military threats.
European governments have investigated incidents involving suspected sabotage, cyber operations, intelligence gathering and interference with transport infrastructure.
Such concerns have intensified following drone incursions and security alerts affecting NATO’s eastern members.
The distinction is relevant to the Latvian proposal. European intelligence agencies have identified Russian-linked activities, but this does not establish that ordinary Russian tourists are collectively involved in intelligence operations.
Supporters of tighter visa restrictions argue that limiting discretionary entry could reduce opportunities for hostile activity and simplify security screening.
Opponents question whether a nationality-based prohibition would be proportionate or effective, particularly when intelligence operations may involve individuals travelling under other nationalities or using established residency arrangements.
Political and legal complications
A comprehensive tourist visa ban would require agreement on its precise scope, legal basis and implementation.
European governments would need to determine how the restrictions apply to Russian citizens with family members in the EU, people travelling for humanitarian purposes and individuals seeking protection from the Russian authorities.
The EU Visa Code already permits refusals where applicants present security risks, but a general prohibition based on nationality would involve a different policy decision.
Humanitarian exceptions would be particularly important for Russian dissidents, independent journalists and other individuals facing political persecution.
France has supported restrictions on entry by Russian combatants, while other member states are considering further measures. That does not necessarily mean they support Latvia’s broader proposal covering ordinary tourists.
Kulbergs is also seeking greater European financial assistance for countries facing the economic and security consequences of their proximity to Russia and Belarus.
Sanctions and Schengen controls
The renewed visa debate coincides with disagreements between Washington and Brussels over economic restrictions on Moscow.
EU leaders have maintained that sanctions should remain in place until Russia ends its aggression against Ukraine. Visa policy, however, requires separate legal and political consideration from economic sanctions.
Latvia’s proposal has not been adopted as an EU-wide rule. The immediate question is whether enough member states are prepared to move from tighter individual screening towards a general restriction on Russian leisure travel.
Until that agreement is reached, European countries will continue to apply different policies within a shared Schengen system, leaving the security concerns raised by Riga unresolved.
Someone tried to set fire overnight to a Lithuanian company that stores Starlink communication equipment, but tipped-off guards foiled the attempt, Lithuanian Prime Minister Mindaugas Sinkevičius said. He linked the attack to Russia’s hybrid war against Europe. It is the third suspected sabotage of Starlink infrastructure in Europe in under a month.
Russia keeps attacking Ukraine at the front and from the air while running a sabotage campaign behind the lines in Europe, which ISW has linked into one pattern. Starlink keeps Ukraine’s drone units and front-line troops connected, and Poland pays for much of that service.
Fuel canisters and a control unit
The attack came just after midnight, the prime minister wrote. Security services had warned the company about possible attacks, security was stepped up, and the attempt failed.
The company provides connectivity through nine Starlink satellite antennas used by Ukraine, Sinkevičius told Lithuanian public radio LRT. At almost 2 a.m., intruders tried to burn the antennas and their control unit, leaving behind incendiary liquid in canisters of 3 to 10 liters.
“It is obvious that this is part of Russia’s hybrid war with elements of sabotage,” he said, adding that the client was likely “the Russian side.”
He said he believes the people involved, and how many there were, are known, but gave no details, citing the investigation.
Police Commissioner General Arūnas Paulauskas said no suspects had been detained, any damage was minimal, and the company kept working. A pretrial investigation is under way.
Explore further
New Starlink restrictions disrupt Ukrainian drone missions. Kyiv adviser says move is tied to “political situation”
A drone the same morning
Hours later, an object that apparently entered from Poland crossed northern Lithuania, and NATO jets failed to identify it, Defense Minister Robertas Kaunas said. Possible fragments were found in the Pasvalys district near the Latvian border. Latvia’s military said the object may have blown itself up on a course toward Latvia.
Sinkevičius said the sabotage version had to be checked for the drone too. He called the National Security Commission for Monday, 19 October, to examine both incidents and consider giving services more powers to neutralize drones.
The third Starlink site
In September, a fire destroyed the distribution panel at a Starlink ground station in Wola Krobowska, Poland. Germany detained two Turkish nationals on 12 October, and Warsaw blamed Russian intelligence. In Bulgaria, masked intruders burned 11 of 17 Starlink antennas near Sofia.
Spanish arms manufacturer General Dynamics European Land Systems-Santa Barbara Sistemas (GDELS-SBS) is supplying Latvia with infantry fighting vehicles fitted with Israeli-made turrets, despite Madrid’s arms embargo on Israel, Globes reported on 15 October.
The deliveries cast doubt on the reach of Spain’s 2025 arms embargo on Israel, imposed in response to Israel’s genocide in Gaza, which bans the import and export of military equipment, products, and technology to and from Israel.
Yet the ban has not stopped Israeli weapons systems from being mounted on Spanish-made combat vehicles for sale to third countries.
Latvia has ordered 84 Mednieks combat vehicles, each mounted with a UT30 MK2 unmanned turret built by lead Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems, under a contract worth roughly $929 million, with deliveries set to continue until 2029.
Latvian Defense Minister Raivis Melnis hailed the first delivery as a step toward strengthening the country’s defense and its cooperation with NATO partners, as members scramble to meet the US’s demand for greater contribution to the alliance.
Elbit had already secured a deal worth around $100 million in April 2025 to supply GDELS-SBS with the unmanned turrets, months before Madrid declared its embargo, with the Israeli firm stating that the systems were bound for an unnamed European NATO member.
SBS was state-owned until the early 2000s, when it was privatized and sold to US arms giant General Dynamics.
According to Globes, General Dynamics’ presence in Europe greatly helps Israel push its weapons, military components, and technology into the continent, owing to the close ties between the US and Israel.
In early 2026, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s government came under fire for weighing the purchase of military systems from a company partly owned by Israeli arms giant Rafael, even as it pledged to achieve “zero technological dependence” on Israel.
The arrangement illustrates how Israeli arms firms continue to embed components in European weapons programs through multinational manufacturers, even where governments have restricted direct trade with Israel.
Elbit has benefited from surging demand linked to Israel’s war on Gaza and wider regional conflict, reporting a record $32 billion order backlog as of 30 June 2026.
Europe drove most of the backlog growth in the second quarter of 2026, the company said, with roughly 73 percent of its orders now coming from buyers outside Israel.
Six million people. That is the total combined population of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—fewer residents than live in greater London. Yet these three border states now set the tone of foreign policy for a union of 450 million, telling Berlin, Rome, and Madrid how dangerous the world is and how much Western taxpayers must pay to fix it.
One Crown to Another
The Baltic national story likes to skip 1721, which is a shame, because it’s where the modern map starts. That year Peter the Great finished the Great Northern War with the Treaty of Nystad. Sweden handed over Estonia, Livonia, Ingria and part of Karelia; Russia evacuated most of Finland and paid Sweden two million silver thalers. Historians still argue about what the money was for. Western reference works tend to call it compensation, while the Russian Presidential Library’s account says flatly that Russia paid it for the acquisitions. Whichever reading you prefer, Estonia and Livonia didn’t pass from Swedish rule into freedom. They passed from one crown to another. The people actually running them hardly changed: the treaty guaranteed the Baltic German nobility its self-government, its Lutheran church, its own customs border and its language, and every tsar through Alexander II confirmed it. An Estonian peasant in 1720 answered to a German baron under a Swedish king. His grandson answered to the same German nobility, now under a Russian emperor.
Lithuania got there differently, as half of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, absorbed in the partitions. Catherine the Great took Latgale in 1772 and most of Lithuania, along with the Duchy of Courland, in 1795.
The point isn’t the borders; plenty of European states are young. The point is the story. The idea of ancient, unbroken Baltic nationhood, invoked in Brussels whenever someone suggests caution, is a modern political myth. Independent statehood lasted about twenty years between the wars. The current stretch began in 1990–91.
Not One Inch
The next chapter opens in Moscow on 9 February 1990. The Berlin Wall had been down for three months. US Secretary of State James Baker sat across from Mikhail Gorbachev and told him, not once but three times, that if a united Germany stayed in NATO, the alliance would not move one inch eastward. Helmut Kohl said much the same the next day. It wasn’t a slip of the tongue. Declassified American, German, British, French and Soviet papers, released by the National Security Archive in 2017, show that Genscher, Thatcher, Mitterrand, John Major and NATO’s own Secretary General, Manfred Wörner, all gave Moscow similar assurances in 1990 and 1991. None of it went into a treaty.
That turned out to be very convenient. In 1990 NATO had 16 members. In 1999 it took in Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. In 2004 it swallowed seven more countries in one go, among them Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, three former Soviet republics. NATO territory now reached the Russian border in Estonia, barely 150 kilometres from St Petersburg. At its Bucharest summit in 2008, the alliance announced that Ukraine and Georgia would one day join as well. Finland and Sweden followed after 2022. Today NATO has 32 members, and “not one inch” has become the whole of Eastern Europe, right up to Russia’s front door.
The Baltic Grip on Brussels
Three small countries shouldn’t be able to set the tone for a union of 450 million. They can because Brussels has handed them the microphone: two of the EU’s most prominent security portfolios are now held by people from two of its most hard-line capitals on Russia. Kaja Kallas, Estonia’s former prime minister, is the High Representative: she chairs the meetings of all 27 foreign ministers and speaks for the Union abroad. Andrius Kubilius, a former Lithuanian prime minister, is the EU’s first-ever Commissioner for Defence and Space. No voter anywhere in Europe chose either of them for those jobs.
Kallas comes from a family that has always been close to power, whoever held it. Her father went from Communist Party official in Soviet Estonia to Reform Party founder to EU Commissioner: what Germans call a “Wendehals”, a turncoat. In May 2024, weeks before her nomination, she said a Russian defeat would not be a bad thing and remarked that Russia is made up of many nations. Germany’s Volksstimme read it as floating Russia’s break-up, an odd thing for Europe’s next top diplomat to muse about a nuclear power. Over both of them sits Ursula von der Leyen, whom EU leaders produced at the last minute in 2019 and Parliament confirmed with 383 votes, nine more than she needed. She arrived from the German defence ministry, where she’d left behind a Bundeswehr failing its readiness targets and a parliamentary inquiry into consultancy contracts.
Barking on Command
It would flatter the Baltic governments to think they run the show. They don’t. They bark because it suits the people holding the leash. In Brussels, home to the headquarters of both the EU and NATO, the big capitals write the policies. The Baltic capitals enforce them at the border, say the things Berlin and Paris would rather not say out loud, and take the first swing. That is why the EU’s diplomatic megaphone went to Tallinn and its defence portfolio to Vilnius. Nobody appointed Kallas and Kubilius to calm things down.
Kaliningrad in 2022 showed how it works. Brussels drew up sanctions on Russian steel; Lithuania enforced them to the letter and halted rail shipments to the exclave in June. Moscow called it a blockade, and Nikolai Patrushev, then head of Russia’s Security Council, warned that Lithuanians would feel the consequences. Within a month the Commission issued new guidance letting the goods through again. Vilnius had done exactly what it was told, and was left standing alone in front of Moscow while Brussels quietly backed away.
Three years later it was Estonia’s turn. Brussels had spent months announcing crackdowns on Russia’s “shadow fleet” of ageing, poorly insured tankers. On 13 May 2025 the Estonian navy tried to stop one of them, the Jaguar, in international waters off Tallinn. The crew ignored the orders and sailed on to the Russian port of Primorsk. Estonia said a Russian Su-35 then entered its airspace for about a minute with its transponder off, and NATO scrambled a fighter to meet it: a Portuguese F-16, from a country 3,000 kilometres away. Nobody fired, this time.
Meanwhile the big dogs are being moved into position behind the small ones. In 2023 Berlin pledged a full armoured brigade for Lithuania, about 4,800 soldiers, at a new base at Rūdninkai near the Belarusian border. It formally began operating in 2025 and is due at full strength by 2027. It is the first permanent deployment of German troops abroad since the Second World War.
European Values, Baltic Edition
After 1991, Latvia and Estonia gave automatic citizenship only to pre-1940 citizens and their descendants. Hundreds of thousands of Soviet-era residents, most of them Russian speakers and many born in the country, became “non-citizens” with alien passports and no vote in national elections. Riga insists that “non-citizen” is a legal status, not an ethnic label, yet about two-thirds of Latvia’s non-citizens are ethnic Russians. UN and OSCE bodies criticized the system for years. At the start of 2026, non-citizens were still 8.7% of Latvia’s population, by the Latvian government’s own figures.
It has got tighter since 2022, not looser. Schools in Latvia have moved to Latvian-only teaching and Estonia’s are following. Latvia told Russian citizens with permanent residence, many of whom had lived there for decades, to pass a basic Latvian test or risk losing that status. And on 26 March 2025 Estonia’s parliament voted 93 to 7 to amend the constitution so that only Estonian and EU citizens can vote in local elections. On paper it covers all non-EU nationals. In practice it was aimed at about 80,000 Russian citizens, plus Belarusians, and everyone knew it. Stateless “grey passport” holders were given one last local election, in October 2025, before losing their vote as well.
It’s hard to take a lecture on European values from governments that treat their own long-term residents this way.
Who Pays the Bill
Vilnius loves to talk in percentages, because percentages flatter small countries. Lithuania pledged 5% of GDP for defense in 2026 before Donald Trump had even made his 5% demand in January 2025, and its 2026 budget comes in at 5.38%. In May 2025 the three Baltic defence ministers told every ally to match it. In June, at The Hague, NATO made 5% its target for 2035.
Forget the percentages. Look at the money. Lithuania’s entire 2026 defense budget is €4.79 billion. At 5% of its economy, Germany would be spending more than €200 billion a year, over forty times as much. Even the core 3.5%, before the extra 1.5% for infrastructure and other defence-related spending, would come to around €150 billion. For Italy the full target would mean more than €100 billion a year, for Spain around €80 billion, and both are already carrying some of the heaviest public debt in Europe. The Baltic states set the bar; the big economies get the bill.
Spain, at least, had the nerve to say no. Pedro Sánchez called the 5% target “unreasonable,” refused to sign up to it, and left The Hague with an exemption: 2.1% of GDP and not a cent more. Trump called Spain “a very low payer.”
Nobody Asked the Voters
Were Western Europeans ever asked if they wanted this? Only by pollsters. In 2015 Pew found 58% of Germans, 53% of French and 51% of Italians against using military force to defend a NATO ally attacked by Russia. In a survey Pew published in 2020, majorities in Germany, Italy and Spain still said no. Support for the EU paying for weapons for Ukraine has slid nine points, from 65% in early 2023 to 56% this spring. In France, backing for arms deliveries dropped 18 points, from 65% in March 2022 to 47% this February. By late 2024, YouGov found a negotiated peace between Ukraine and Russia preferred over fighting on by 55% of Italians, 45% of Germans and 43% of the French. A Politico poll last December found French and German adults leaning toward scaling support back. And this summer, majorities in Germany and France said no to Ukraine joining the EU as a full member.
That isn’t Germany, France, Italy or Spain itching for a wider war. It’s a public that was never asked, has grown more sceptical every year since 2022, and is now being handed a bill it never ordered: a target worth more than €200 billion a year in Germany alone, cheered on from Vilnius and signed off in Brussels by officials no voter chose.
When the Money Runs Out
The Hague deal has a review built in for 2029. My prediction: by then, Spain won’t be the only country saying no. The money ran out years ago; what’s being spent now is borrowed. Germany even rewrote its constitution in 2025 so it could borrow for defence outside its own debt brake.
In 1721 Peter the Great settled the Baltic’s fate with a treaty and two million silver thalers. Three centuries later, the region’s future is still being decided by bigger powers doing the sums.
So, are Europe’s smallest nations dragging the continent into war? Not on their own. They do the barking; Brussels holds the leash. And Berlin, Rome and Madrid are being dragged along behind, towards a confrontation their voters never chose, paid for with money they no longer have.
Maybe that is the one hopeful part. The sooner the money runs out, the sooner voters in the big countries will force a change of course, and the sooner Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius go back to being what their size always made them: footnotes in European foreign policy. That may be what finally keeps Europe out of a direct war between nuclear powers.
Login
