The Baltic states and Poland plan to send their soldiers to Ukraine before and without an official NATO decision, reported the German Der Spiegel. This bombastic news has been covered by many relevant Western, including Croatian media. With frequent provocations at the maritime borders of the Baltic states with Russia and Russian demands for their ‘redesign’, along with the announcement of building a drone wall along the border with Russia and Belarus as a joint project of the Baltic states, Poland, Finland, and Norway, the news of the possible sending of soldiers from NATO member states to Ukraine has once again drawn attention to the Russo-Ukrainian war and European-Russian relations.
The dissemination of dramatic news is a common way to draw attention back to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has turned into a prolonged war and a rather diffuse policy of Western allies (the USA, NATO, and the EU) towards that war. Therefore, to try to understand the current phase of the geopolitical conflict being fought through the Russo-Ukrainian war, let’s start by reducing the drama. To put it another way – let’s de-dramatize the bombastic announcement.
Unidentified Sources
First, the announcement of sending Baltic and Polish soldiers to Ukraine reportedly came from unidentified parliamentary representatives of an unidentified Baltic state or states (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) on the margins of a security conference in Tallinn. It was reportedly directed primarily to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who has recently been strongly opposed to sending German weapons to Ukraine if they are to be used outside Ukrainian borders, that is, on Russian territory. Thus, Chancellor Scholz is very conditionally opposed to sending weapons to Ukraine, which is in line with current American policy. Moreover, the announcement of sending Baltic and Polish soldiers to the war in Ukraine is more than conditional.
Not only because it comes off the record, from an unidentified parliamentary representative (or more of them) of questionable relevance. But also because this information bomb has a continuation of the sentence, it has its – if. It states that the Baltic states and Poland will send their soldiers to Ukraine if Russian forces significantly advance territorially on the battlefield. And the situation on the battlefield has been practically frozen for almost two years, still in the initial phase of the war. Neither last year’s insufficiently successful Ukrainian counteroffensive nor the more recent Russian offensives have achieved effects that could be called significant territorial changes in the relationship between the warring parties. And so it will, apparently, remain indefinitely, as Ukraine does not have the strength to militarily regain the territory that Russia has annexed (Crimea) or occupied (Donbas) and integrated into its system. And it would be too risky and politically unprofitable for Putin to conquer drastically more Ukrainian territory than he has already taken. In short, Baltic soldiers in Ukraine are not a bomb, but an ordinary firecracker.
