By Galina Korol | 2026-06-15

Last month, Latvian soldiers began lowering 1.5-ton concrete pyramids into the ground along the country's border with Russia. The land beneath them had to be seized from private owners first. By the time the project is complete, nearly 1,000 hectares of expropriated land will anchor a fortification line running 450 kilometers (280 miles). It is a physical answer to a question Baltic governments have been asking since February 2022: how do you stop what happened to Ukraine from happening here?

The answer, Latvian military planners say, is to make the border itself the battlefield.

A line in the ground

Latvia's National Armed Forces began installing anti-mobility barriers on expropriated land along the Russian border in late May, part of the Baltic Defense Line -- a fortification project Latvia is building with Lithuania, Estonia, and Poland. The barriers will run along Latvia's 450-kilometer (280-mile) border with Russia and Belarus.

Baltic Defense Line project officer Col. Andris Rieksts said the goal is not simply to slow down an invader, but to destroy one at the border, LSM.lv reported. He pointed directly to Ukraine as the model: reclaiming lost territory is far harder than holding it.

Nearly half of the roughly 2,000 hectares designated for the defense line is private land. The government promises compensation and describes the project as a matter of national security.

Moscow signals openly

Latvia's rationale extends beyond battlefield lessons. Russia has escalated its rhetorical threats against the Baltic states, and those threats are landing differently than they once did.

On May 29, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a press conference following his visit to Kazakhstan that "all locations from which a direct military threat originates are legitimate military targets" -- a category he applied to Latvia if drones are launched from its territory into Russia.

Lithuanian Prime Minister Inga Ruginienė dismissed that framing directly.

"The Baltic states have never provided their airspace or territory for drone strikes against targets in Russia," she said June 1. "This is complete disinformation and propaganda by Russia as the aggressor."

European Union High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas warned in a Wall Street Journal interview that a prolonged war in Ukraine could push the Kremlin toward further escalation. The Russian leadership, she argued, may eventually need a new justification to sustain domestic mobilization.

"A point comes when they need to escalate to justify mobilization," Kallas said. "And that is a very dangerous point."

The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has also raised the prospect of taking Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia to the International Court of Justice over alleged discrimination against Russian speakers, even as Russia has previously rejected that court's rulings.

Lithuanian journalist Anna Norn, who covers the region for the publication Delfi, said the Kremlin's current posture toward the Baltic states closely tracks the rhetoric used before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

"I remember very well how, before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian propagandists showed maps and explained how they would take Kyiv in three days and then move toward Poland and the Baltic states," she told Kontur.

Norn stressed that the messaging is not organic. "These propagandists do not act on their own. They are told what to say, and they say it."

Viktor Yahun, a retired major general in Ukraine's Security Service and director of the Agency for Security Sector Reform, said Russia's stated concern for Russian speakers abroad has nothing to do with protecting rights.

"We saw this against Ukraine, against Moldova, and against other countries. They invented a concept that Russians anywhere in the world require special protection from Russia," he told Kontur.

He noted that Baltic minority legislation is not meaningfully different from that of other European nations.

"Portugal and Spain are just far away, while the Baltics are right next to Russia. That is why they look for pretexts to apply pressure here."

Threat real, timeline debated

A late May article in The Times modeled a possible Russian offensive against NATO's eastern flank: simultaneous strikes from Belarus and the Kaliningrad region, a push through eastern Latvia, and Vilnius encircled by day five, with Moscow threatening nuclear weapons to hold its gains.

Viktor Taran, a Kyiv-based defense and military innovation expert and head of the KRUK UAV Operators Training Center, said the scenario raises a fundamental question: which army would execute it?

"As of 2025, conservative estimates show Russia has lost around half a million troops killed in Ukraine. Armor losses exceed 3,000 tanks and 7,000 other vehicles," he told Kontur. "An army bogged down in heavy fighting in Ukraine for years without a decisive breakthrough is physically incapable of launching a three-pronged offensive on this scale."

The threat horizon, Taran said, is further out, but real.

"It is entirely realistic in a five- to ten-year perspective if Russia rebuilds its military potential and if the West weakens its support for Ukraine," he said.

Meanwhile, Baltic societies are still catching up to the reality their governments are already acting on. Norn recalled a similar gap in Ukraine in the days before Feb. 24, 2022, when residents in frontline cities doubted war was coming.

"People live their normal lives: going to work in the morning, making plans, taking care of their families," she said. "However, as a society, we still don't fully grasp the scale of the threat Russia could pose."

After multiple trips to Ukraine, Norn said she has long since packed emergency supplies -- food, water, a medical kit, a full tank of gas.