In an interview with The Telegraph, the former director of Latvia\u2019s SAB intelligence service warned that the Baltics were much more vulnerable to such attacks than Ukraine.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you look at the Baltic states, we are much more vulnerable than Ukraine, which is a large country with lots of energy infrastructure redundancy,\u201d said J\u0101nis Ka\u017eoci\u0146\u0161, who served as an officer in the British Army before joining the SAB.<\/p>\n
Energy infrastructure redundancy refers to a country\u2019s ability to keep its power grid online despite attacks on critical infrastructure or natural disasters.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs tiny countries with limited resources, we need to be absolutely sure that our deterrence is strong enough to make sure Russia does not view us as a suitable target,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
A major concern for Latvia, Mr Ka\u017eoci\u0146\u0161 said, was therefore a significant sabotage attack on energy infrastructure that would fall just short of the threshold for Nato invoking Article 5, its mutual defence clause.<\/p>\n
That said, he remains deeply sceptical of fears that Russia may try to swamp the Baltic militarily while its forces are still tied up in Ukraine.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you can\u2019t even deal with the armed forces of Ukraine, are you really going to take on Europe in a military conflict which has already cost you an arm and a leg?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat we need to do is not only strengthen our deterrence but do whatever we can to help the next Russia get out of the hole they have dug themselves into for over a hundred years, so they can be a normal country.\u201d<\/p>\n
Much like Poland to the south, Latvia\u2019s scars from Russian rule run deep: it won independence from Soviet Russia in the 1920s, only to be reoccupied by the Red Army in 1940, which had taken it back from the Nazis.<\/p>\n
Entry to the EU in 2004 brought substantial investment via the single market, with annual GDP more than tripling from $11bn (\u00a38.3bn) to $53bn (\u00a341.5bn) over more than two decades in a country of only 1.8 million people.<\/p>\n
Next in the firing line<\/p>\n
Russia\u2019s invasion in 2022 brought deep anxiety that Latvia could be next in the firing line, and the government responded by pushing defence spending to 4.9 per cent of annual GDP.<\/p>\n
In the streets of Riga, the capital, one is never far from old Soviet architecture and memorials to Latvians killed in pursuit of independence.<\/p>\n
The grandest of them all, the 138ft-high Freedom Monument, depicts a local folk hero nicknamed \u201cMilda\u201d, bearing the three stars of Latvia\u2019s three regions atop a steep column.<\/p>\n
Daiga Klavina, an administrative worker at the national parliament, said that despite Russia always being on people\u2019s minds in Latvia, they try not to let it get in the way of living.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe more we know, the better we are prepared,\u201d said the 37-year-old, who was glad to hear of the Nato exercises taking place in Liep\u0101ja, her hometown. \u201cIt\u2019s really important that we co-operate with people from all kinds of professions and countries to exchange experience.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not everyone was reassured by all the talk of building up defences against Russia, however.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In an interview with The Telegraph, the former director of Latvia\u2019s SAB intelligence service warned that the Baltics…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3215,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1596,69,924,20,450,675,2506,315,84],"class_list":["post-3214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-baltic-region","tag-latvia","tag-nato-north-atlantic-treaty-organization","tag-russia","tag-standard","tag-top-story","tag-us-content","tag-us-navy","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3214\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}