Yves here. Even though most geopolitically oriented eyes are focused on Ukraine, the related peace talks, and the dangerously simmering situation in the Middle East, particularly serious US noises about mixing it up with Iran, there are secondary flash points related to these conflicts that can add heat to these fires. One general category that most readers know well is the way the weak players, the EU ex Hungary and Slovenia, and particularly the UK and the Baltic states, are determined to throw a spanner into a possible settlement of the Ukraine conflict.
This post reinforces a point yours truly has made repeatedly: Putin can win the war but still lose the peace. The UK and his friends are determined to make that happen if they can. Recall that Putin’s aim is not simply to stop the fighting, but to create “a new European security architecture”. The next best would be to establish a durable acceptance by the key players in Europe of the resolution.
The problem here is Europeans have been fed decades of swill about how monstrous Russians and Putin are, and that propagandizing has become more intense over the course of the war. Additionally, the Baltic states are stuck in a time warp, regarding modern Russia as no different than the now long dead Soviet Union.
Professor John Mearsheimer has warned that there won’t be a clean and well-accepted outcome to this war, even assuming a US-Russia “deal”. He identified multiple hot spots settlement refusniks could keep stoking, from Transnistria to Kaliningrad to one of areas discussed below, the Baltics. Recall also that NATO has nuclear capable missiles installed in Romania and Poland. Unless the latter systems are removed, Russia is still under threat, albeit not as acute as with a belligerent and once well-armed NATO proxy on its doorstep. All it takes is a regime change in DC for the US to go on a hostile footing again. With Trump on track to tank the economy, and Vance having the worst poll ratings of any VP at this point in his tenure, Vance 2028 does not look like a great bet, even allowing for the abject awfulness of the Dem bench. Of course, I charitably assuming the US actually does hold elections then.
By Andrew Korybko, a Moscow-based American political analyst who specializes in the global systemic transition to multipolarity in the New Cold War. He has a PhD from MGIMO, which is under the umbrella of the Russian Foreign Ministry. Originally published at his website
Putin’s senior aide Nikolai Patrushev, who ran the FSB for nearly a decade (1999-2008) before chairing the Security Council for over 15 years till recently (2008-2024), shared some updates about the Baltic and Arctic fronts of the New Cold War in a recent interview with Russia’s National Defense magazine. He began by blaming the Brits for orchestrating Baltic tensions in order to disrupt the incipient Russian-US normalization process and associated talks on Ukraine.
In connection with that, he also warned that some NATO members (presumably led by the British) are practicing cyberattacks against Russian ships’ navigation equipment and suggested that they might have been responsible for recent claims of sabotage in the Baltic, which prompted a larger naval presence. This same expanded presence poses a threat to Russia’s interests and could manifest itself through terrorist attacks against its underwater pipelines, tankers, and dry cargo ships.
Russia plans to defend against this through unmanned underwater systems and strengthening its Baltic Fleet. As for one of the worst-case conventional threats, that of Finland and Estonia teaming up to blockade Russia inside the Gulf of Finland, Patrushev expressed confidence that his country could overcome that plot and punish the aggressors. This segued the conversation into a discussion about Finland, which Patrushev said has a friendly population, unlike its government.
He mentioned how the authorities there distort history to avoid talking about the goal of “Greater Finland”, which took the form of occupying Northwestern Russia, placing its inhabitants into concentration camps, and exterminating the Slavs there. Just like Finland was used by the Nazis as a springboard for aggression against the USSR, so too did Patrushev warn that plans might be afoot for NATO to use it as a springboard potential aggression against Russia.
He then said a few words about how the Arctic is opening up as a new front of competition, mostly due to its resources, but reaffirmed that Russia wants peace and cooperation there instead of rivalry. The Northern Sea Route (NSR), which commemorates its 500th-year conceptualization this year, can help bring that about. Russia will continue developing regional infrastructure and building ice-class vessels for facilitating transit through these waters year-round. It was on that note that the interview ended.
Reviewing Patrushev’s briefing, the first part about blaming the Brits for tensions in the Baltic aligns with what Russia’s Foreign Spy Service (SVR) recently claimed about how the UK is trying to sabotage Trump’s envisaged “NewDétente”. It might therefore very well be that they’re attempting to open up this front for that purpose, first through unconventional acts of aggression like “plausibly deniable” terrorist attacks and then possibly escalating to a joint Finnish-Estonian blockade of the Gulf of Finland.
Exposing these plots and expressing confidence in Russia’s ability to overcome them were meant to respectively ensure that the Trump Administration is aware of what the UK is doing and to deter the UK’s regional proxies from going along with this since the US and even the UK might hang them out to dry. Patrushev’s words about Finland were important too in the sense of reminding everyone that governments don’t always reflect the will of the people on the foreign policy front.
At the same time, however, everyone should also be aware of the Finnish government’s historical distortions and the threat that its reckless foreign policy poses to its own people. Wrapping everything up, Patrushev pointed to the Arctic’s importance in Russia’s future planning, and his reaffirmation of its peaceful intentions could be interpreted as a willingness to partner with the US there like their representatives discussed last month in Riyadh. The NSR can also become a vector for cooperation too.
Putting everything together, the Arctic front of the New Cold War is thawing a lot quicker than the Baltic one since the first is where the US could prospectively cooperate with Russia while the second is where the UK could try to provoke a crisis with Russia, but it remains to be seen whether any of this will unfold. Russian-US cooperation in the Arctic is likely conditional on a ceasefire in Ukraine whereas a Russian-NATO conflict in the Baltic orchestrated by the Brits is conditional on them misleading the US about this.
Putin’s interest in a lasting political solution to the Ukrainian Conflict bodes well for the Arctic scenario just like Trump’s criticism of NATO bodes ill for the Baltic one so both ultimately come down to their will. They’re the two most powerful people on the planet so their ties will greatly determine what comes next on those fronts and every other one too. It’s precisely for this reason why the British want to ruin their relations, but after Patrushev just exposed their Baltic plot, that’s a lot less likely to succeed than before.
