“The enemy, undoubtedly, will receive an appropriate response!” said Vladimir Putin in his first extensive public assessment of the Ukrainian troops’ incursion into Russia. And the “enemy,” he clarified, is not only—and indeed not so much—Ukraine as the “West which is waging a war on us with the hands of the Ukrainians.”

In addition to increased bombardment of Ukraine and intensified attacks on Ukrainian positions in the Donetsk region, could the “response” include a tit-for-tat attack on a vulnerable NATO country on the alliance’s eastern flank, most likely Estonia or Latvia?

The possibility of such an invasion is not a novel hypothesis. To extricate Russia from the morass of an unwinnable war, Putin could well engineer a direct confrontation with NATO, bring Russia and the US to the brink of a nuclear war, and force the West to negotiate an “overall settlement” the centerpiece of which would be “peace” in Ukraine on Russian terms.      

Of course, in advertising his repost, Putin may be bluffing, again. But the Ukrainian operation inside Russia has added an important and urgent dimension to Putin’s war with the West. The past nine days have been a personal insult to the Kremlin’s master. After all, as he told his compatriots on the eve of the invasion of Ukraine, in addition to “de-Nazifying” Ukraine, the key objective of the “special military operation” was to prevent NATO from invading Russia. (There is likely a memory of another failure weighing on Putin: the sinking 24 years ago this past Monday of the Kursk submarine, bearing the name of the capital city of the region assaulted by the Ukrainian troops.)    

Keeping the war as far as possible from the country’s everyday life— socially, politically, economically—has been at the center of Putin’s design of maintaining social peace while hemorrhaging the country’s blood and treasure. Instead, the Kursk region’s residents are reported to be “shocked at the turn of events”—as certainly have been millions of Russians. With his past incendiary lies and boosterish beating of the chest coming home to roost, Putin surely feels the heft of the question his subjects are asking: Now that the West invaded Russia, why shouldn’t Russia invade the West?

Several factors might recommend such a plan to Putin. He is likely to interpret Joe Biden’s decision to drop out of the presidential election as a major political crisis, if not indeed a paralysis in Washington’s decision-making.

Secondly, stretched and stressed as the Russian troops are in Ukraine, occupying and holding a sliver of Estonian or Latvian territory, followed by the threat of nuclear strikes, should NATO attempt to regain ground, are all within the realm of the feasible.

Between them, in addition to their own modest armies, the two Baltic countries are defended by 4,000 multinational NATO troops, nine fighter jets from Germany and Italy, a multiple rocket-launcher battery, a HIMARS battery of six individual launchers, 30 UK Challenger 2 tanks and some Leopard 2 tanks from Spain and Canada. 

In the unlikely event that Russia’s bombs and missiles leave undamaged at least some airfields for landing, with the exception of 2000 NATO troops in Lithuania, no rapid deployment troops rushed to the Baltics for reinforcement can deploy to Estonia or Latvia within 48 hours in significant numbers: neither the Fort Liberty, North Carolina-based 82nd Airborne Division, nor NATO’s Very High Readiness Joint Taskforce, nor the 10,000 US troops in Poland nor the Polish troops. 

With limited capabilities and preoccupied with protecting their own territory from Russian aggression, Finland and Sweden would be unlikely to help on such short notice.

Might Putin be tempted to kill two birds with one stone: to prove his ability to avenge humiliation—something essential for an authoritarian’s legitimacy—and scare the West into granting him a victory in Ukraine? We’ll know the answer in the next few weeks.      

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