‘Russia preparing for conflict with NATO’

London, UK - Russia is ramping up preparations for a potential military conflict with NATO within the next decade and is planning to double the number of its troops stationed along its border with the Baltic states and Finland, Estonia’s intelligence chief claimed on Tuesday.

Russia is currently unwilling to take any military action against the Western alliance in the short term, partly because Russia has to keep troops in Ukraine, Kaupo Rosin, director-general of the Estonian Foreign Intelligence Service, told reporters in the capital Tallinn ahead of the release of Estonia’s national security threats report. However, according to him, Moscow believes a military conflict with NATO is possible within the next 10 years.

“We will highly likely to see an increase in manpower, possibly doubling. We will see an increase in armed personnel carriers, tanks, and artillery systems over the coming years,” Rosin said, referring to the Baltic states of Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia, as well as the Finnish border.

Rosin is the latest European official to warn of a military expansionary threat to Baltic states from the Kremlin, calling for European states to start increasing their military spending and rearming. Estonia and other Baltic states have increased military spending to more than three per cent of GDP on defence this year, exceeding NATO’S two per cent target.

He claimed that the likelihood of a military Russian attack ‘would be much higher than without any preparation’.

The Russian war on Ukraine has prompted Germany to permanently plan to base 4,800 troops in the Lithuanian region by 2027, which analysts argue is at risk of a Russian attack.