Tag Archives: Kaliningrad

Kaliningrad could become next flashpoint as Baltic nations demand more troops

Revelations 6:3-4 “when he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!” 4 And out came another horse, bright red. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that people should slay one another, and he was given a great sword.

Important Takeaways:

  • Baltic nations demand a new garrison of 50,000 NATO troops to stop Putin surrounding Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia with lightning assault through flashpoint ‘Suwalki Gap,’ as crucial summit begins
  • First full day of NATO summit has got underway in Madrid, Spain today as leaders tackle Russian threat
  • Baltic states will lobby for permanent 50,000-strong force on their territory to defend Europe’s eastern flank
  • They fear Putin will strike next after he is finished with Ukraine, potentially cutting them off from reinforcements with lighting attack in Sulwaki Gap
  • Russia is already menacing Lithuania after it cut off supply lines to Kaliningrad
  • US President Joe Biden this morning said US would ramp up forces and equipment across Europe
  • That has prompted Russia – via its state media propaganda networks – to warn of a ‘de-facto’ war with NATO, which it argues could spiral into a nuclear Third World War.

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Putin to watch parachute drop, part of war games that have rattled West

Russian President Vladimir Putin uses a pair of binoculars while watching the Zapad-2017 war games, held by Russian and Belarussian servicemen, with Chief of the General Staff of Russian Armed Forces Valery Gerasimov seen nearby, at a military training ground in the Leningrad region, Russia September 18, 2017.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – President Vladimir Putin arrived at a remote army training ground on Monday to watch a military parachute drop, part of Russia’s biggest war games since 2013 that have the West looking on nervously.

NATO officials say they are watching the “Zapad-2017” (“West-2017”) war games with “calm and confidence”, but many are unnerved about what they see as Moscow testing its ability to wage war against the West. Russia says the exercise is rehearsing a purely defensive scenario.

A parachuter descends before landing at a firing range during the Zapad-2017 war games, held by Russian and Belarussian servicemen, outside the town of Ruzhany in Belarus, September 17, 2017.

A parachuter descends before landing at a firing range during the Zapad-2017 war games, held by Russian and Belarussian servicemen, outside the town of Ruzhany in Belarus, September 17, 2017. REUTERS/Vasily Fedosenko

The Russian Defence Ministry said Monday’s parachute drop, at a military facility in the Leningrad region, would see 450 paratroopers and nine armored vehicles dropped from military transport planes, a show of military might that is likely to be heavily covered on state TV.

Putin, commander-in-chief of Russia’s armed forces, has often appeared at such events in the past, using them to bolster his image among Russians as a robust defender of the country’s national interests on the world stage.

The Russian leader, 64, has not yet said whether he will run for what would be a fourth presidential term in March, but is widely expected to do so.

Once the paratroopers and their vehicles have landed behind the lines of their simulated enemy, their task will be to wage war against what the defense ministry in a statement called “illegal armed formations” and to destroy their opponents’ vital infrastructure and command centers.

A Belarussian Mi-8 helicopter flies above a firing range during the Zapad-2017 war games, held by Russian and Belarussian servicemen, outside the town of Ruzhany in Belarus, September 17, 2017.

A Belarussian Mi-8 helicopter flies above a firing range during the Zapad-2017 war games, held by Russian and Belarussian servicemen, outside the town of Ruzhany in Belarus, September 17, 2017. REUTERS/Vasily Fedosenko

The over-arching Zapad war games run to Sept. 20 and are taking place in Belarus, western Russia and Russia’s exclave of Kaliningrad.

Moscow says almost 13,000 Russian and Belorussian service personnel are taking part, as well as around 70 planes and helicopters. Almost 700 pieces of military hardware are being deployed, including almost 250 tanks, 10 ships and various artillery and rocket systems.

 

(Reporting by Andrew Osborn; Editing by Janet Lawrence)

 

Bracing for Russian military exercise, Lithuania puts up a border fence

Workers drill a hole for a fence near the Sudargas border crossing point with Russia in Ramoniskiai, Lithuania June 5, 2017

By Andrius Sytas

RAMONISKIAI BORDER CROSSING POINT, Lithuania (Reuters) – Lithuania has began constructing a two-meter high wire fence along its border with the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad ahead of military exercises Moscow is planning to hold there in September.

While the 45-km-long (30 mile) fence will provide little defense against a full-scale attack, it aims to prevent provocations and incidents, Lithuanian Interior Minister Eimutis Misiunas said on Monday.

“In order to avoid such situations, we decided we need the fence”, Misiunas said at the groundbreaking ceremony.

For Lithuania and other Baltic republics, which won their independence from Moscow in 1991 but remain home to ethnic Russian minorities, any massing of Russian troops near their borders spreads concern, especially since the 2014 annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula by Moscow.

Although Russia has not disclosed the size of the Zapad (West) exercises that it holds every four years on its western borders, analysts have said that this year’s drill may be the largest in quarter of a century, with a movement of about 100,000 Russian troops expected.

The recent deployment of 1,000 NATO troops to Poland and each of the Baltic states has unnerved Moscow, which had warned in January that it was a bad idea.

The United States will have doubled its troops in the region for the duration of the military exercises, an official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.

In July, the U.S. Patriot surface-to-air missile (SAM) missile battery will be deployed in Lithuania for two weeks in July, for the first time in the region where Russia has air superiority.

The fence, which is to cost 3.6 million euros, is to define clearly the geographical border between Kaliningrad and Lithuania. Surveillance equipment installed alongside will give an early warning of any violation, the minister said.

(Writing by Andrius Sytas; Editing in Warsaw by Lidia Kelly)

Russia beefs up Baltic Fleet amid NATO tensions

(L-R) Russian navy corvette Steregushchy, destroyer Nastoichivy and frigate Admiral Gorshkov are anchored in a bay of the Russian fleet base in Baltiysk in Kaliningrad region, Russia

By Andrew Osborn and Simon Johnson

MOSCOW/STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – Russia is sharply upgrading the firepower of its Baltic Fleet in Kaliningrad by adding warships armed with long-range cruise missiles to counter NATO’s build-up in the region, Russian media reported on Wednesday.

There was no official confirmation from Moscow, but the reports will raise tensions in the Baltic, already heightened since Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, and are likely to cause alarm in Poland and Lithuania which border Kaliningrad.

The reported deployment comes as NATO is planning its biggest military build-up on Russia’s borders since the Cold War to deter possible Russian aggression and will be seen as a riposte to that.

Russia’s daily Izvestia newspaper cited a military source as saying that the first two of five ships, the Serpukhov and the Zeleny Dol, had already entered the Baltic Sea and would soon become part of a newly formed division in Kaliningrad, Russia’s European exclave sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania.

Another source familiar with the situation told the Interfax news agency that the two warships would be joining the Baltic Fleet in the coming days.

“With the appearance of two small missile ships armed with the Kalibr cruise missiles the Fleet’s potential targeting range will be significantly expanded in the northern European military theater,” the source told Interfax.

Russia’s Defence Ministry, which said earlier this month the two ships were en route to the Mediterranean, did not respond to a request for comment, but NATO and the Swedish military confirmed the two warships had entered the Baltic.

“NATO navies are monitoring this activity near our borders,” said Dylan White, the alliance’s acting spokesman.

The Buyan-M class corvettes are armed with nuclear-capable Kalibr cruise missiles, known by the NATO code name Sizzler, which the Russian military says have a range of at least 1,500 km (930 miles).

Though variants of the missile are capable of carrying nuclear warheads, the ships are believed to be carrying conventional warheads.

“The addition of Kalibr missiles would increase the strike range not just of the Baltic Fleet, but of Russian forces in the Baltic region, fivefold,” said Ben Nimmo, a defense analyst at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, who has been tracking the ships’ progress.

“The two small corvettes, with their modern, nuclear-capable missiles, may yet have an impact out of proportion to their size in the Baltic.”

SWEDEN WORRIED

Izvestia said Russia’s Baltic Fleet would probably receive a further three such small warships armed with the same missiles by the end of 2020.

It said the Baltic Fleet’s coastal defenses would also be beefed up with the Bastion and Bal land-based missile systems. The Bastion is a mobile defense system armed with two anti-ship missiles with a range of up to 300 km (188 miles). The Bal anti-ship missile has a similar range.

Sweden’s Defence Minister said his country was worried by the presence of the warships in the Baltic Sea, complaining the move was likely to keep tension in the region high.

“This is … worrying and is not something that helps to reduce tensions in our region,” Defence Minister Peter Hultqvist told Sweden’s national TT news agency. “This affects all the countries round the Baltic.”

Swedish media said the Kalibr missiles had the range to hit targets across the Nordic region. The Russian Defence Ministry said in August that the two corvettes had been used to fire cruise missiles at militants in Syria.

When asked about the deployment, a Polish government spokesman said Warsaw was not commenting on the situation in the Baltic sea “for the moment.”

Earlier this month, Russia moved nuclear-capable Iskander-M missiles into Kaliningrad leading to protests from Lithuania and Poland.

(Additional reporting by Jack Stubbs in Moscow, Justyna Pawlak in Warsaw and Robin Emmott in Brussels; Editing by Alistair Scrutton and Andrew Heavens)