Any pause in fighting in Ukraine would allow Russia to rebuild its forces and launch a confrontation with European Union countries, Latvia’s state security service warned Monday, as U.S. President Donald Trump launches peace talks with the Kremlin.
In a newly unclassified report published by the Baltic nation’s Constitution Protection Bureau, intelligence officers assess that “the likelihood of a direct Russian-NATO military confrontation in 2025” is “rather low” because Moscow’s manpower and resources are tied up in the costly invasion.
“However, if the war were to become ‘frozen’ and Russia no longer had to suffer significant losses during the active hostilities in Ukraine, Moscow would be able to increase its military presence next to the NATO’s northeastern flank, including the Baltics, within the next five years,” the report warns.
Trump announced last week that he would open negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin over ways to end the war in Ukraine, blindsiding both Kyiv and Washington’s fellow NATO allies in Europe. In response, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on the White House to recognize that “Putin does not want to end the war.”
At the same time, Latvian intelligence says, sanctions, capital flight and other economic challenges due to the war “will not cause Russia to collapse, but will, almost certainly, weaken the country both domestically and internationally in the long run.”
The longer the war drags on, it predicts, the Kremlin’s ability to maintain its sphere of influence will fall.
Despite the bleak outlook for the Russian state, the report warns that the country’s special services are actively developing their capabilities to conduct sabotage and other attacks across Europe. In recent months, the Baltic states have sounded the alarm over a number of low-tech efforts to disrupt critical infrastructure and stoke division in society.
“It is very likely that the Russian services are testing the European reaction and ability to prevent such incidents,” the Latvian agency says, but cautions that such hybrid tactics are part of Moscow’s military doctrine in the event of a full-blown conflict with the West. The Kremlin, it says, is expanding “sabotage capabilities on NATO territory so that they would be sufficiently developed in the event of a real military confrontation.”
The warning comes days after the Danish Defense Intelligence Service last week claimed Russia could be ready to wage a “large-scale war” in Europe within five years. “Russia is likely to be more willing to use military force in a regional war against one or more European NATO countries if it perceives NATO as militarily weakened or politically divided,” it said.
The post ‘Freezing’ Ukraine war would allow Russia to threaten NATO, Latvian intelligence warns appeared first on Politico.
