RIGA, Latvia — They’re dotted on dozens of buildings across the Latvian capital: signal green signs with white stick figures of a family and the word “patvertne,” which means shelter.
Installed everywhere from art deco buildings to wooden gates, the signs alert people to places to hide in the event of an attack — and have become one of many symbols of war preparedness in this charming city, which is crisscrossed with canals and looks nervously east at its Russian neighbor.
After a string of recent aircraft incursions along NATO’s eastern flank and suspicious drones shutting down airports in several European countries including Germany, Denmark and Norway, fears about Russian aggression are growing in Latvia and its fellow Baltic nations, Estonia and Lithuania, already spooked by Moscow’s war in Ukraine.
“We are on the front line. We are the eastern flank countries. We are neighboring Russia, an aggressive country,” Andris Sprūds, Latvia’s defense minister, told NBC News earlier this month at the Riga Conference, a meeting of international political and military leaders.
He added that Latvia, which launched a drone initiative earlier this year, had to some extent “already developed some resilience” in the face of any Kremlin aggression.
Other attendees openly talked about a direct conflict between NATO and Russia. In an onstage discussion at the conference, Matthew Whitaker, the U.S. ambassador to the organization, publicly theorized with his fellow panelists about weapons systems, including long-range missiles and strategic bombers, that could be used against the Kremlin’s forces.
But he also emphasized that modern warfare begins before troops and military hardware are deployed.
“The first shot of the next war is not going to be tanks through the Suwalki Gap,” he said in a separate interview with NBC News, referring to the narrow land bridge between Poland and the Baltic states, seen as a potential attack point in a Russian invasion. “It’s going to be a cyberattack. It’s going to be knocking out airports or critical infrastructure.”
Latvia and other Baltic countries have been very receptive to recent NATO initiatives and are on track to reach defense spending targets soon, he said, adding that they were “investing in things that are going to field more capabilities for our defense and deterrence.”
“The investments that make each individual ally stronger and therefore the collective alliance stronger are the important investments, and a country like Latvia is certainly doing it best in class right now,” he added.
Adm. Rob Bauer, who chaired NATO’s military committee from June 2021 until January, also suggested that a new conflict with Russia would be fought “in a different way.”
Ukraine, he said, lacked air power and strong naval assets, adding that NATO fighter jets had been carrying out missions over the Baltics from the USS Gerald Ford after it was deployed to the North Sea earlier this year.
Others, like Roberta Metsola, the president of the European Parliament, openly acknowledged that it took “way too long” for other nations to listen to Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, which were occupied by the Soviet Union for decades and more recently have been at the forefront of pushing NATO allies to take the Russian threat seriously.
Airis Rikveilis, the national security adviser to Latvia’s Prime Minister Evika Silina, said his country was not only focusing on increasing military capabilities, but also on preparing civil society for conflict.
“This is not going to be 1940,” he said, referring to the first Soviet occupation, when the Red Army was able to take over within weeks. “Should that battle start tomorrow, we’ll be ready to fight tomorrow with what we have,” he added.
After Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, there have been visible changes across Latvia, which has installed a fence along its 176-mile border with Russia. It has also cut itself off from the shared power grid with Russia and Kremlin ally Belarus, which sits to Latvia’s south, and is now relying on energy from its other neighbors.
In Riga, officials have demolished the 260-foot victory memorial dedicated to the Soviet army and renamed the road where the Russian Embassy is located to Ukrainian Independence Street.
The blue street sign sits at the corner building next to the embassy’s CCTV cameras and under its large flag. Dozens of Ukrainian flags fly in the square just across the road.
Linda Ozola, who served as Riga’s deputy mayor for five years until this summer, oversaw the rebuilding of the shelter network, among other civil protection measures. She said her staff had to scout museums and archives for old documents, as well as reinspect old shelter spaces, some of which had fallen into disrepair.
Emergency services have identified hundreds of existing shelters, and updated legislation has cleared the way to build new ones. Their locations are available on a website and cellphone app.
Some of them will likely be funded by an 85 million euro ($99.4 million) deal signed on the sidelines of the Riga Conference by Arvils Ašeradens, Latvia’s finance minister, and European allies. The majority of that funding will be used to enhance the civil protection infrastructure, and some will also be used to install generators at health care facilities.
Ozola said the city has also started to build up a stock of emergency supplies including canned food and sleeping cots. Riga has been an example for the other regions of Latvia and could also be one for cities across Europe, she said.
“The truth is not good because we have a crazy neighbor who wants to destroy our country. And the neighbor is not hiding that, really,” she said. “They haven’t physically crossed the border, but they have crossed the airspace and they have cut our critical infrastructure in the Baltic Sea.”
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