(and in the Black Sea). These force NATO to consider prepositioning heavy materiel and increase the need for more persistent deployments of fighting units in the Baltic States. A premium is also placed on NATO’s ability to provide reinforcements to the Baltic States, either via Poland’s narrow (112 kilometre-wide) Suwalki corridor running between Kaliningrad and Belarus, or by circumventing Kaliningrad, possibly via Sweden and Finland.
Along with the access to and defence of St. Petersburg, the “Northern Capital”, the Russian threat perception in the Northwest is primarily centred on protecting tous azimuts its nuclear deterrent and the Northern fleet on the coast of Murmansk, including the shipyards of Arkhangelsk and the missile launch centre in Plesetsk. Air defence is concentrated against a transpolar threat. The Russian sea denial capability reaches far south into the Norwegian Sea. Land protection is the task of the new Arctic brigade being formed in Alakurtti, south of Murmansk and close to the Finnish border.
For Russia, the loss of a strategic buffer after the Baltic States joined NATO has been remedied by a build-up of a strong denial capability (A2/AD) around Kaliningrad, while the new-found agility of its armed forces compensates for reductions in the force structure, along with the new emphasis placed on nuclear weapons.
The return of nuclear weapons to the European theatre has caught the West by surprise. In a world where non-proliferation replaced nuclear disarmament, the sudden re-discovery that nuclear weapons could be brandished for political or strategic gain, and possibly even be used, came as a shock. Russia has systematically upgraded its nuclear triad, as has the United States. The same applies to the nuclear deterrents of Britain and France. But the rest of Europe, especially Germany, but also Finland and Sweden, has all but forgotten about nuclear strategy and its intricacies. The Russian investment in its nuclear deterrent remains its only claim to superpower status. Nuclear weapons are nevertheless weapons and reminding the United States and NATO about its nuclear potential is part of Russia’s deterrence in the war in Ukraine. In the annexation of Crimea, Russia ostensibly made the point that any territory passing under direct Russian control would ipso facto benefit from the extension of Russia’s nuclear umbrella. Russia attaches particular importance to short-range nuclear weapons, both as battlefield weapons countervailing conventional imbalances and as tools for exerting psychological and political pressure, as evidenced in a number of exercises in the Western Military District, sometimes in conjunction with Belarus.
