Diggers and cement mixers will soon roll into Estonia’s fields to give Nato’s eastern border with Russia a significant military upgrade. Hundreds of reinforced bunkers will be built as part of a new defensive line to protect the Baltic states — and by extension the entire western defence alliance — from a Russian attack.
Further south, Lithuania is opening more than a dozen so-called counter-mobility parks, stores for equipment such as the anti-tank obstacles, barbed wire and concrete blocks that are all designed to slow down potential invaders. Latvia, like the other two Baltic states, and Finland have also put up fences on their borders with Russia or Belarus.
The works are a visible sign of how security in Nato’s frontline states is now determined by Russia’s war in Ukraine. Russian forces thwarted Kyiv’s counteroffensive last summer and have regained the initiative on the battlefield. Baltic leaders who saw Russia’s defeat in Ukraine as the best way of guaranteeing their own security now see the tide of the war turning in Moscow’s direction.