By Galina Korol and AFP | 2024-10-31

KYIV -- The Russian invasion of Ukraine has significantly increased NATO's vigilance toward the Baltic region and Baltic Sea as the location of vulnerable areas that Russia may strike in an attempt to destabilize Europe.

"The relevance of the region has become even more evident against the backdrop of the ongoing Russian aggression in our immediate neighborhood," said German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius during remarks at the inaugural ceremony for the NATO naval command center Commander Task Force Baltic (CTF Baltic), on October 21 in Rostock, Germany.

The center's main purpose is to "coordinate naval activities in the region" and provide NATO with "a picture of the maritime situation in the Baltic Sea region around the clock," the German military said the same day.

It will be led by a German admiral and staffed by personnel from 13 NATO countries.

"This is a somewhat belated but proper response from the Germans and others, because in reality Russia still poses a threat to NATO," Alexander Khara of Kyiv, a foreign policy analyst at Ukraine's Center for Defense Strategies and former diplomat, told Kontur.

Conspicuous discontent

The launch of CTF Baltic has provoked the Kremlin's ire.

The very next day, German Ambassador to Moscow Alexander Graf Lambsdorff was summoned to the Russian Foreign Ministry, where Russian authorities "expressed a resolute protest."

"Washington, Brussels and Berlin must bear in mind that the expansion of NATO's military infrastructure into the territory of the former GDR [East Germany] will have the most negative consequences and will not remain unanswered by the Russian side," said a Russian Foreign Ministry statement quoted by Interfax Russia on October 22.

The Kremlin accused Germany of violating the Two Plus Four Treaty of 1990, which, according to Moscow, prohibits the deployment of foreign troops in the former GDR.

However, Germany rejects these claims.

"The transformation of the German maritime command into the 'Commander Task Force Baltic' is in accordance with the Two-Plus-Four Treaty," Lambsdorff said.

"The assignment of German armed forces to the structures of NATO is also permitted under the Two-Plus-Four Treaty," he added.

That pact allows German military units to serve under NATO command anywhere in Germany, he continued.

Pistorius said the new CTF headquarters would serve to plan maritime operations and drills, as well as to lead naval forces assigned by NATO during times of peace, crisis and war, DW reported October 22.

CTF Baltic is no NATO headquarters, said BILD correspondent Robert Becker on the publication's Telegram channel. It's a "German naval headquarters with international participation."

Russian espionage

Russia's distress may be justified, as its plans to destabilize the Baltic region could be significantly undermined, analysts say.

"This headquarters can counter Russia's attempts, including hybrid ones, to destabilize the Baltic Sea region and Western countries in general," said Stanislav Zhelikhovsky, a Kyiv-based political scientist and international analyst.

This is especially true given that "Russia is not abandoning its attempts on the Baltic Sea to conduct espionage," he told Kontur.

In late September, German media published the results of an investigation of Russian spy ships gathering information about critical infrastructure and NATO in the Baltic Sea.

"Russia is using so-called 'research vessels' equipped with sensitive hydroacoustic and radar technology to spy on critical infrastructure," German investigative journalists found, DW reported September 24.

Those ostensible research vessels in reality are mostly "attached to the Russian Defense Ministry or the Russian Navy," DW added.

Their explicit purpose is to "scan the sea floor and provide this information to the military," DW said, quoting a former crew member of the Russian research vessel Sibiryakov.

Reduced hold on Baltic Sea

"For Russia, the situation in the Baltic Sea has deteriorated dramatically because now the Baltic states are not as vulnerable as they were before, given that Finland and Sweden have ... become NATO members," said Khara.

Russia is now the only non-NATO member among the nine countries along the Baltic Sea.

NATO's dominance of the sea makes Russia's Baltic base in Kaliningrad vulnerable, he noted.

The Kremlin might have plans to lash out in this region between NATO members Lithuania and Poland.

"Russia's desire to emerge victorious from the war [in Ukraine] is what drives Russian military and political leaders to take asymmetric actions and raise the stakes," said Vitaliy Kulik, director of the Center for Research on Civil Society Problems in Kyiv.

They are contemplating "a strike on the Baltic countries," he told Kontur.

German intelligence chief Bruno Kahl said Russia may attack NATO by the end of the decade, according to Euronews.

"Direct military conflict with NATO [is] becoming an option for Russia," Kahl told a German parliamentary committee in October.

'Little green men'

Rather than a large conventional war, the Kremlin might opt ​​for a "hybrid war, where Russia seizes some small piece of territory, for example, a small Estonian city," said Khara.

The Baltic countries are internally vulnerable because they have many "vatniks [Kremlin sympathizers] of Russian descent," he added.

Vatniks could help "little green men" -- Russian troops without official army insignia -- carry out such an operation, observers say.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's worldview might drive him to try "something that seems illogical to us," Khara noted.

Accordingly, devoting more NATO resources like CTF Baltic to the Baltic Sea makes sense.

"Russia understands that a direct military conflict with the West is possible only when the West is not united and when NATO is incapable of adequately responding under such conditions," said Kulik.