Ukraine war: All countries bordering Russia ‘endangered’, Latvian military chief warns

After a missile strike killed two people in Poland last week, a consequence of the war raging in Ukraine, Latvia is reminding the world that it is exposed to the Russian threat.

All countries neighbouring Russia are currently in danger, according to the assessment of a senior officer from a country currently receiving military support from Canada.

After a missile strike killed two people in Poland last week, a consequence of the war raging in Ukraine, Latvia is reminding the world that it, too, is exposed to the Russian threat. It shares 300 kilometres of border with Russia, which has annexed it twice in its history.

This risk of being swallowed up again “cannot (be) ruled out,” Col. Didzis Nestro, acting head of the Latvian army’s land component, said in an interview with The Canadian Press last week.

Canada is playing a leadership role in supporting this Baltic NATO member. Just over 1,200 soldiers from 10 countries, including 700 from Canada, train at Camp Adazi as a unified combat group defending Latvia. The country’s own regular army counts about 6,000 members.

“It seems that all the wars that Russia has tended to wage, starting from Chechnya, are all kind of directed to regain access points (from the USSR era and tsarist Russia before that) and to safeguard the access points to the outer world,” Nestro said, speaking in a modest office in a large military complex on the outskirts of the Latvian capital of Riga.

“If we go around the Russian border line, then we can see that basically all the countries bordering Russia are, in this way, endangered,” said Nestro, who is also acting chief of staff for government affairs.

Formerly a territory conquered by the Russian Empire, Latvia had to win its independence twice. After becoming a state following the First World War, it was annexed by the Soviet Union under Josef Stalin in 1939. Then in 1991, during the disintegration of the U.S.S.R., it again proclaimed its independence.

“The risk has been diminished (of annexation), (but) we cannot rule out anything happening,” Nestro said. “That’s why we as a country _ and the alliance in general _ have a certain sense of alertness to face any of these kind of unpredicted situations because Russia and (its President Vladimir) Putin is unpredictable.”