A Hatchet in Murky Waters: Why Russian border guards removed buoys on the Narva River

Escalation scenarios

In October 2003, Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma urgently aborted his visit to Brazil and flew to the island of Tuzla in the Kerch Strait. The island was incorporated into the Crimean ASSR in 1941 and became part of the Ukrainian SSR in 1954 along with the whole of Crimea. As a result, after the collapse of the USSR, both banks of the navigable waters of the Kerch Strait, and thus the strait itself, became Ukrainian. In the autumn of 2003, Russia began building a dam on its side, which brought the island and the Russian-Ukrainian border very close to the island. Later, Kuchma admitted that he had given orders to open fire if the Russian builders crossed the border. The crisis over Tuzla was the first major conflict between Russia and Ukraine during Vladimir Putin's presidency, followed by several rounds of gas wars and the annexation of Crimea a decade later.

Disputed water borders are a standard and, one might say, ideal pretext for escalation. Crossing a land border is unequivocally considered aggression, while unilateral delimitation of a water area or non-military occupation of disputed islands creates a wide field for escalatory manoeuvring. This pattern was evident in the Soviet-Chinese conflict on Damansky Island in 1969 and the outbreak of the Falklands War between Great Britain and Argentina in 1982 (when Argentine workers landed on the uninhabited island of South Georgia).

In this context, we should not be deceived by the apparent insignificance of the two consecutive conflict events that occurred last week. First, the Russian government information portal published a draft of the Ministry of Defence's unilateral revision of the borders in the Baltic Sea. This document soon disappeared from the portal, and Russian state agencies, citing an unnamed military-diplomatic source, said that Moscow had no plans to change the borders in the Baltic. However, just a day later, on 24 May, Russian border guards removed more than 20 buoys on the Narva River, which Estonia had previously installed to mark the border with Russia.

If the scenario of a direct conventional military clash between Russia and NATO countries in Europe, which has been intensively discussed by experts over the past year, were to materialise, it would most likely begin in a similar way – with minor claims disrupting the status quo, followed by ultimatums and the build-up of troops. A similar scenario could unfold in the South China Sea, creating the threat of direct military conflict around Taiwan. Whether these scenarios are destined to materialise in the future remains an open question, but there is no doubt that current events are an early rehearsal for them.

Hybrid Baltic

Chief European diplomat Josep Borrell described the Narva incident as ‘part of a broader spectrum of hybrid actions by Russia, including on its maritime and land borders in the Baltic Sea region’. In April, the Finnish airline Finnair announced a one-month suspension of flights between Helsinki and Tartu in Estonia, 50 kilometres from the Russian border. Ryanair, Wizz Air and British Airways also reported numerous navigation failures in the Baltic region. All of this is the result of deliberate GPS signal suppression by Moscow, which Politico calls a textbook example of Russian ‘grey zone’ aggression: it causes noticeable harm but does not involve military violence, making it difficult for those affected to choose an appropriate response.

In October 2023, the Balticconnector undersea gas pipeline connecting the Finnish and Estonian gas systems across the Gulf of Finland was deliberately damaged, as was a telecommunications cable running alongside the pipeline. As Admiral Didier Maleter, deputy commander of NATO's Allied Maritime Command, has noted, ‘our entire underwater economy is at risk’. Moreover, it should be noted that the start of hybrid infrastructure warfare in the Baltic was the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline in September 2022, apparently carried out by a Ukrainian sabotage group.

The two informational incidents last week have elevated the situation in the Baltic to a fundamentally new level, setting the stage for articulated territorial claims and unilateral actions. As a result, think tanks and analysts began to immediately calculate the balance of power in the region and analyse possible scenarios for escalation that could lead to a military conflict. In principle, such a conflict could pose significant economic complications for Russia. As Chatham House expert Marion Messmer writes, St Petersburg and Primorsk are important for Russia's oil exports and imports of consumer goods, including food. Without these ports, Russian cargo delivery would have to be rerouted around Norway and Finland, which would significantly complicate all logistics and increase costs. However, Russia has sufficiently demonstrated its willingness to sacrifice economic interests for somewhat vague geopolitical goals.

The accession of Finland and Sweden to NATO after Russia's aggression in Ukraine has led some politicians to speak of the Baltic Sea as ‘NATO's inland lake,’ but as Julian Pavlak, a research fellow at the German Institute for Defence and Strategic Studies, notes, the alliance has yet to form a workable strategy to deter Russia in this region, which is critically important for Moscow. Thus far, the Baltic remains NATO's ‘inland lake’ only on paper.

Balance of power

The Kaliningrad region is the base of the Baltic Fleet, the location of nuclear weapons, and the only region in the Russian Federation with a Baltic port that remains ice-free year-round. At the same time, Russia's military potential in the Baltic is currently significantly weakened, notes Julian Pawlak, as a substantial part of the previously stationed ground forces and air defence systems have been redeployed for combat operations in Ukraine. Additionally, as Atlantic Council expert John Denis notes, since the Cold War, the size of the Baltic Fleet has been drastically reduced due to chronic underfunding. 

Although in Soviet times it had up to 130 submarines alone, today it consists of one submarine, five missile destroyers, one missile frigate, as well as 35 patrol and coastal warships and 13 amphibious assault ships. The most capable units of the Russian Navy are part of the Northern Fleet and are stationed in Murmansk. At the same time, the Russian Air Force grouping in Kaliningrad, which includes attack aircraft and fighters capable of launching anti-ship missiles, remains virtually intact.

However, the balance of power in the Baltic will shift in favour of Moscow, which responds more quickly to challenges arising in the region, experts say. The West is unprepared to repel a Russian invasion in the Baltic, including on Gotland, because it ‘lives in an imaginary world where recent promises of rearmament have already taken effect,’ Jan Kallberg, an expert at the Centre for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), sarcastically notes in a review with the ominous title ‘Code Red: How Russia Conquers the Baltic.’ 

The Russian military command has acknowledged that the military balance in the Baltic is not in its favour, writes Pavel Baev, a visiting expert at the Brookings Institution, and as early as December 2022 it had announced plans to create a new army corps in Karelia. An important change in the organisational structure of Russian forces in the region was the reestablishment in March 2024 of the Leningrad Military District, which unites the Northern and Baltic Fleets, as well as the ground forces on Russia's northwestern borders. According to Estonian intelligence estimates, Moscow plans to deploy new military units in key strategic directions along the border with NATO. However, for the time being, the realisation of these plans has been postponed due to the war in Ukraine.

Threat scenarios

According to Denis, the main possible scenarios that the Russian threat may take in the Baltic may be acts of underwater sabotage, as well as limited military operations to seize strategically important islands. However, this would already be a scenario of direct military conflict.

One such island is Sweden’s Gotland, which is located in the centre of the Baltic Sea, 300 kilometres from the base of the Baltic Fleet. According to Professor Natasha Lindstedt of the University of Essex, if Russia were to seize Gotland during a military crisis, it would dominate the Baltic Sea region and make it difficult for Western countries to provide reinforcements to the Baltic States by sea and air. Gotland was demilitarised in 2005 to promote peace and cooperation in the Baltic region, but despite this, in 2013, two Russian Tu-22M3 missile bombers approached the island within 24 miles and conducted simulated bombing runs. After the annexation of Crimea, Sweden stationed several hundred soldiers on Gotland, as well as CV90 armoured vehicles, Leopard 2 tanks, and air defence systems. In April 2023, Sweden conducted its largest military exercises in 25 years on Gotland, along with Polish and British forces.

Julian Pawlak writes that NATO and the US face the challenge of preparing for both defensive and offensive action in the Baltic, a basin consisting of the territorial waters of the coastal states as well as their exclusive economic zones. This prevents NATO from exercising full control over the sea, since, as under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, coastal states are obliged to provide passage to foreign vessels in peacetime. The strategy for combat operations in the Baltic must take into account the significance of this sea for global trade (15% of the world's container traffic passes through the Baltic) and the fact that it is shallow, filled with numerous islands and narrow straits, making navigation challenging.

In such a situation, medium and small naval forces, such as the Royal Danish Navy and the German Navy, as well as asymmetric measures, including increased investment in coastal defence systems, become particularly significant. After Finland and Sweden joined NATO, the allies' potential in the Baltic Sea was strengthened by Finnish and Swedish bases and infrastructure, including the Swedish Navy, which operates well in the shallow Baltic.

However, John Denis notes that, at present, the US and European allies lack the capacity to deter Russia in the Baltic. Naval development has long been a lower priority for European allies compared to land and air forces. Alliance countries also lack anti-ship coastal artillery systems to defend strategically important territories (such as the Danish island of Bornholm), and their technical ability to counter Russian electronic warfare systems remains low.

To improve NATO's readiness for conflict in the Baltic, it is necessary not only to increase naval funding but also to carry out a series of structural reforms, Denis believes. For example, Sweden can play a decisive role in ensuring uninterrupted military logistics. But to test this, NATO allies should work out the movement of an American or British brigade through Sweden, bypassing the Straits. NATO countries also need to increase their patrols in the Baltic Sea after the Baltissonner incident and establish a network of national monitoring systems to detect potentially threatening underwater vessels. Baltic coastal states must address the interoperability of their armed forces. This raises the important question of who will provide Western leadership in deterring Russia in the region. John Denis believes that this should be Great Britain given its strong naval traditions. For this purpose, he suggests creating a new specialised NATO joint forces command in the UK for the Baltic and High North countries.

An escalation scenario in the Baltic is not unexpected for the Western alliance. Notably, the topic of Finland and Sweden joining NATO began to be publicly discussed at the state level just a week after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, on 4 March 2022. What has changed since then is the realisation that NATO membership in and of itself is not enough. The Russian border guards' exercise with the buoys at Narva definitely indicates the beginning of a new round of confrontation in the Baltic and raises questions for the Baltic states about giving NATO membership more substantive content.