What does Russia get out of repeatedly violating Baltic state airspace?

19 comments

1. It gets free propaganda !

2. Forcing an escalation

3. Testing Nato response times and tying up equipment in the area that cannot be send to Ukraine.

4. Russia is doing this to make sure NATO keeps the air defence equipment and ammo to itself rather than giving it to Ukraine.

5. Proving that NATO is ineffective? Eventually. Slowly. Maybe. Still worth a shot.

6. Diversion from internal struggles? Chest thumping about violating NATO’s border and no consequence.

   I think NATO has a very mature response to all this, it’s essentially just face saving on Russia’s part. An escalation has a very high cost for NATO with a real threat of nuclear escalation.

   A tough stand should be used in Ukraine, where NATO should have warned Russia of NATO’s direct intervention for Russia’s targeting of civilians (residential and office), hospitals, and schools. Unfortunately Nuclear threat always looms and everybody prefers to be cautious.

7. They are probing response times and intensity. It also is a firm of psych warfare, creating tension in Europe. 

8. They have been doing this forever, these incidents started to be more common as soon as the Baltic states showed intent of joining NATO.

9. Another large part of these things are to incur costs and wear on the adversary aircraft fleet. The Turks do it to the Greeks, the PLAAF do it to the Taiwanese. It’s hard to get decent sortie rates out of your jets in wartime when they’ve been absolutely flogged to death in the past decade by running constant QRF and scramble cycles.

10. Russua knows they are too weak to attack Europe, so the only way to destroy them is to cause disruption and trouble within them. If Europe increases their military expenses, there is less to spend for social and economic benefits and that will make many ppl very angry

11. What a bully always does, annoy the people around them so they respond into action. Then blame them for needing to react against this “violence” and oppression of so-called Russian “values”. Scaring the people leads to stockpiling weapons and with it starve Ukraine.

    Apparently many Russians are still oblivious why the gas prices are so high, while Ukraine is depicted as incapable of any form of defense – hence it’s “nato by proxy”. But even for the Russians it’s a too weak argument as things still happen on Ukrainian soil. When NATO retaliates directly to whatever incursion then they can blame the total Russian decline on NATO and ‘finally’ start a full scale war and deflect anger away from the Kremlin….

12. Partially, some or all of the below:

    1. Observing how the Baltic states respond to incursions, trying to identify weaknesses to exploit should they ever decide to invade.
    2. Showing the Baltic states and, by extension, NATO to be impotent when they fail to forcefully react.
    3. Keeping Baltic states on the back foot, stockpiling munitions for their own defence which they might otherwise donate to Ukraine.
    4. Promoting “alertness fatigue” – there’s only so many high alerts over what turns out to be a “lost” unarmed drone which can be tolerated until people stop caring and complacency creeps in.
    5. Normalising “accidental” incursions, so when the Baltic states finally do respond by shooting something down, Russia can claim *them* to be the aggressors. *”This was just an accidental incursion, which has happened many times before without incident – a total overreaction and evidence of escalation by Nato puppets…”*
    6. Stoke fear of invasion in the public’s mind, in the hope that they will pressure their governments not to provoke and oppose Russia and face their wrath.

    This can, of course, backfire on Russia. Baltic states rapidly building their military capabilities, rushing to build stockpiles of munitions, and a public frustrated, angry, and bellicose due to the constant incursions and demanding their government respond more forcefully – both by protecting their own airspace and also helping Ukraine protect theirs.

13. It’s not just one thing.

    As others have said, ensuring AD assets aren’t moved to Ukraine is part of it. Poland, for example, has to think of their own defense before helping Ukraine, whereas maybe they’d be more inclined to give up, say, a Patriot battery, if Russia wasn’t sending drones into Poland.

    Testing responses and response times is probably part of it, but I for one think that’s a very minor aspect. It never hurts to validate your intel, but I think Russia probably has a good idea what the responses would look like anyway because that’s fairly easy to game out.

    Keeping NATO off-balance is a much bigger part of it, probably the biggest part of it. Any time you can make your enemy unsure of what you might do is a good thing. Give your enemy dilemmas, not problems, basically. It produces paralysis, and any paralysis helps Russia in Ukraine. They’ve been playing for time for years, and that’s still the game (though the way Ukraine is building domestic capabilities it may well be a losing game for Russia in the long term).

    They are also likely trying to crack the alliance by pushing JUST far enough to provoke a response from one country that others view as not sufficient to back. It’s risky, but if, say Estonia, invokes article 5 over a Mig incursion that they shoot down, but then no one – most especially the U.S. – doesn’t act in accordance with their obligations, then NATO is likely done. This is extremely risky, which is why I don’t think it’s the primary goal, but I think it’s part of the calculus.

14. They are testing to confirm that NATO is still afraid of conflict.

15. It’s not just about tying up NATO planes and burning fuel. Every violation also maps NATO’s radar/response times, conditions Europe into treating breaches as “normal,” and signals to both Russian and Western audiences that nothing happens when NATO airspace is crossed. That’s more dangerous than the wear and tear Russia is training the West to accept the unacceptable.

16. Testing the now adrift NATO after trump did Putin so many favors.

17. It don’t invoke article 5, I don’t think there is any protocol for violation of airspace. The country can arrange a meeting based on article 4, and they do, things are happening too. But the public have a different expectation in regards to how the reaction should look like.

    My guess it that NATO want status quo because Russias enconomy is bleeding fast and is unsustainable. If NATO can keep status quo and supply ukraine, Russia will fall within a few years.

18. The behavior is pretty familiar if you’ve ever seen a sociopath or an abusive spouse in action. Pushing boundaries, micro aggressions, constant conscious pressure to be in control of what is “normal” so the next act of violence will seem less severe. Any pushback garners a loud overreaction framing the victim as an aggressor, after which the aggressions resume.

    The goal is to set a new “normal”.

19. They keep testing NATO in hopes of it failing the test. They do not wish to have a war, but to create an incident proving that NATO is a fiction. That would give them incredible advantage, paving the way to colonization of Baltic states and Easter Europe, similarly to what it has done with Belarus, and – to a lesser degree – with Armenia, Georgia, or Kazakhstan.

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