Most of the discourse surrounding the NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine naturally focuses on events inside that country. This nowadays includes the improvised “war of attrition” that’s being waged by both sides within it, false flag attack scenarios against its nuclear power plants, and what would have to happen for Russia or Belarus to use nukes in this conflict. What most commentators have forgotten about though is how NATO’s northeastern flank can stir up a lot of trouble for Russia if the order is given.
Lithuania’s failed blockade of Kaliningrad in summer 2022 and this year’s efforts to build an “EU defense line” along the Polish-Belarusian border to the Estonian-Russian one, which would de facto function as a new Iron Curtain that could expand to the Finnish-Russian border, aren’t discussed enough nowadays. That might change after the Commander of the Estonian Defense Forces spoke last week about Tallinn’s plans to close off the Gulf of Finland. Here are his exact words as reported by publicly financed ERR:
“Maritime defense is an area where cooperation between Finland and Estonia is set to increase, and we may be able to make more concrete plans on how, if necessary, we can completely block adversary activities in the Baltic Sea, literally speaking. Militarily, this is achievable, we are ready for it, and we are moving in that direction. If there is a threat and it is necessary, we are ready to do it to protect ourselves.”
That prompted the Russian Foreign Ministry to respond as follows according to Sputnik:
“If Finland and Estonia plan to impose a complete blockade of the Gulf of Finland for Russian shipping, Russia will regard such actions as an obvious violation of international maritime laws. Its norms do not contain provisions that allow, even based on some ‘threat,’ to introduce measures to restrict shipping, much less unilateral measures of a discriminatory nature aimed at a specific state…but we proceed from the fact that in this matter they will strictly adhere to the norms of international law.”
The scenario of Estonia and Finland blockading the latter’s namesake gulf in parallel with Lithuania reimposing its own blockade on Russian access to Kaliningrad via its territory from Belarus therefore can’t be ruled out. It might only be a response to escalating NATO-Russian tensions and not a surprise provocation, but it would still be serious enough to provoke a Cuban-like brinksmanship crisis. Russia will not allow its exclave of Kaliningrad, which is its westernmost operating base against NATO, to be cut off.
Another possibility is that Trump threatens Putin with this after the election if he wins as a “negotiating tactic” for getting him to accept whatever deal he’s offered in Ukraine on pain of that happening if he refuses. Estonia wouldn’t talk about blockading the Gulf of Finland without prior encouragement from the US, and these same hawkish forces might either manipulate Trump into thinking this is a “good idea” or have already convinced Kamala to go through with it if she wins, which is a cause for global concern.
