A few years ago, the scenario which Canadian and other NATO troops rehearsed in Latvia last week might have seemed unthinkable — even alarmist to the untrained eye.
On a mud-soaked, winter-scorched training range a few dozen kilometres outside of Riga, roughly 3,400 troops from 14 nations — under the brigade leadership of a Canadian commander — exercised how they would conduct a last-ditch defence of the Latvian capital.
The stark scenario opened 30 days into a hypothetical invasion of the Baltic state by a belligerent neighbour with a forgettable, fake name.
Everyone knew “the enemy” was Russia, but nobody spoke the name.
The exercise unfolded in the same week as relations between the United States and Ukraine were thrown into the deep freeze following an ugly, televised shouting match involving President Donald Trump, Vice-President JD Vance and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office.
The notion that Washington is moving more closely into Moscow’s orbit is being keenly felt in Latvia. The country has witnessed Russian bases in the Baltic — once emptied of troops and equipment because of the Ukraine war — now being refilled and restocked.
All three Baltic states — Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania — have increased the fortification of their borders with Russia. But there is nervousness about whether the United States would honour the holy grail of the NATO treaty, Article 5, that stipulates an attack on one member is an attack on all.
Latvian Defence Minister Andris Spruds told CBC News in a recent, exclusive interview that his country would like to see more NATO troops on the ground and more military equipment pre-positioned in the tiny nation for the necessary reinforcements that would be brought in during a crisis.
“There is room and space for even [bigger] and stronger presence,” Spruds said in an interview, which aired Saturday on CBC Radio’s The House.
“We must remember that Latvian border is the external border of the European Union and NATO. So, it is not just about protecting Latvia, protecting the region. It’s about protecting the eastern flank, it’s about protecting the NATO and EU allies as well.”
The Western military alliance has organized the defence of Latvia under a multinational division, which includes the Canadian-led brigade. The division is led by Danish Maj.-Gen. Jette Albinus, who also told CBC News in a recent interview that a ceasefire — or full peace settlement in Ukraine — would allow Russia to turn its full attention to the Baltic region.
In mid-February. The Danish Institute for International Studies published a report that warned Russia is likely to continue its military buildup in both the Baltic and the Arctic regions.
Albinus says Denmark’s intelligence service has assessed that peace in Ukraine — although welcome and necessary — would raise the threat level on the border with the Baltic states.
“There is no doubt .. that the threat here will rise,” Albinus said.
“It just makes me put up my sleeves and prepare even better … you have to show them that you are ready to fight and defend Latvia and the Baltics.”
Moving troops in a crisis
The question that has haunted NATO military planners since the alliance troops were first deployed in the Baltic in 2017, is whether the contingents could be reinforced and resupplied in a crisis.
The current plan for Latvia’s defence sees Canada, Denmark and Sweden rushing additional troops to the country. The question is: Can they get there with Russian submarines in the Baltic Sea, and perhaps the airspace closed?
Albinus said she’s more confident that the sea lanes will remain open now that Sweden and Finland have joined NATO.
There are also large-scale plans to reinforce the Baltics via the rail system, other allied commanders said.
Col. Henrik Rosdahl, the commander of the Swedish mechanized battalion which is part of the Canadian-led brigade, said his focus is to make sure the troops that are already deployed are able to hold on and fight back in the event of an invasion.
However, he said, Sweden — like Canada — is in the process of rebuilding its army.
“Am I confident? I would say so,” Rosdahl told CBC News. “We will have issues to bring a major force [to Latvia] since we’re building up our national defence forces, as we speak.”
But he added the question of reinforcements is something his country’s political and military leadership was better positioned to answer.
The commander of the Canadian Army, Lt.-Gen Mike Wright, who was in Latvia for the exercise, said he is “content” with the level of preparations by the Canadian-led brigade and noted that the Germans have a brigade in Lithuania and the U.K. leads a separate one in Estonia.
“We are not alone,” Wright said. “We are part of that deterrence and collective defence on NATO’s eastern flank.”
Last year, the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) examined what a war in the Baltics would look like and how it would play out geopolitically.
The report concluded that Russia would probably be able to make swift gains in the Baltic region, even with NATO reinforcements, and the Kremlin could within three days of opening hostilities resort to blackmail informing “NATO that any attempt to reoccupy Russia’s new Baltic oblasts will trigger a nuclear response.”
Given the Trump administration’s threats to acquire Greenland “one way or another” and to possibly annex Canada through economic force, the CEPA scenario — like the war game in Latvia — doesn’t seem very far-fetched anymore.