NATO will launch strikes deep into Russian territory if Moscow invades the Baltic states, Estonia’s foreign minister has said, signaling a tough posture from the alliance’s eastern flank.
In an interview with The Telegraph published Monday, Margus Tsahkna said NATO’s response to any attack on Estonia, Latvia, or Lithuania would extend well beyond their borders.
“We’ll bring the war to Russia and we’ll have very deep strikes very far into Russia,” he told the outlet on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference. “We know exactly what to do.”
“That’s why we are now speeding up our investments and developing our capabilities... it’s why we are investing 5 per cent of GDP on defense in our region.”
His comments come amid heightened concern across Europe that Russia could test NATO’s collective defense commitments.
Over the past year, repeated drone and fighter jet incursions near alliance airspace have fueled suspicions that Moscow is probing Western defenses and gauging response times.
Russia has simultaneously expanded its military footprint near NATO territory. Along its border with Finland, Moscow has increased troop levels and upgraded bases. It has also restructured its western military districts and intensified the militarization of Kaliningrad, its Baltic Sea exclave wedged between NATO members.
At sea, the so-called Russian “shadow fleet” has been linked to sabotage incidents targeting undersea telecommunications and power cables connecting Scandinavia and the Baltic states.
In January, NATO launched Baltic Sentry, a joint mission aimed at deterring and preventing attacks on critical infrastructure in the Baltic Sea.
“We cannot let Russia into the Baltic states”
“The previous plans of the past were just, ‘if Russia is coming, then NATO finally will win the war,’” Tsahkna said in the remarks published on Monday. “In that case, no Estonians will be left. So we are not interested about these kind of plans.”
“This is our plan because there is no other plan. We cannot let Russia into the Baltic states and [only] then fight back.”
The warning follows pointed rhetoric from Moscow. In April 2025, Sergey Naryshkin, head of Russia’s foreign intelligence service, said Poland and the Baltic nations would be primary targets if NATO engaged in what he called “aggression.”
Speaking to the state-run news agency RIA Novosti, he said Russia would inflict “damage” on the entire military alliance if threatened by NATO but that Poland, Lithuania would be “the first to suffer.”
In response to what they view as a growing threat, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania have dramatically increased defense spending, with plans to allocate as much as 5 to 6 percent of GDP to military budgets.
Estonia has passed legislation requiring new office and apartment buildings above a certain size to include bunkers or bomb shelters. In Latvia, officials in April 2024 urged residents to convert basements into air raid shelters.
Lithuania in May last year said it would spend $1.25 billion equivalent on boosting its eastern border’s defenses due to the growing threat from Russia.
War simulation portends disaster
Concerns about regional vulnerability were underscored in a December war game organized by the German newspaper Die Welt and conducted with former NATO and German army officials.
The exercise envisioned Russian forces invading Lithuania and accomplishing most of their objectives within days.
The scenario imagined the Kremlin citing a fabricated “humanitarian crisis” in Kaliningrad as a pretext to seize the Lithuanian city of Marijampole.
Set in October 2026, the simulation depicted Russian troops sweeping into the strategically important city, a key junction along the corridor linking Russia and Belarus, and securing the area with an initial force of just 15,000 troops.
The exercise sparked backlash from Baltic officials. Sven Sakkov, Estonia’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, criticized the premise in a post on X.
“Such scenarios are, frankly, insulting to frontline countries, which are too often portrayed as passive objects rather than as subjects with agency of their own.”
On Sunday, Egils Zviedris, the head of Latvia’s intelligence agency, warned that Russia will not end the militarization of its economy after the war in Ukraine comes to a close.
However, though he acknowledged that Russia has drawn up military plans to inflict aggression on Latvia and its Baltic neighbors, he was confident that “Russia does not pose a military threat to Latvia at the moment.”