VISAGINAS, Lithuania — In a gentlemen’s club in the Lithuanian town of Visaginas, less than 30 kilometers from the Belarusian border, a group of men are playing pool. Some drink beer, others order glass flasks of vodka, and frustrated yet well-humored exclamations of “yolki palki” — Russian for “darn it” — punctuate the clicks of billiard balls.
I approach a short, broad Dagestani man. He works in municipal government, he says, but won’t tell me his name. Is he scared of his eastern neighbors, primarily Russia? In the silence, he takes a step closer toward me. Our stomachs are practically touching. Suddenly, he throws his head back and laughs. “Me? Afraid of Putin?” he asks incredulously.
The international community has been on high alert in the run-up to the jointly organized Russia-Belarus Zapad 2017 military exercise.
The exercise — which begins September 14 — will take place in the Republic of Belarus as well as in the Kaliningrad, Leningrad, and Pskov regions, according to Russia’s ministry of defense.
They will observe a scenario in which the fake countries of Veyshnoria (northwestern Belarus), Vesbaria and Lubenia (fragments of Lithuania and Poland respectively) foment discord in the region.
The calm mood among locals close to the Russian border stands in stark contrast with the alarmist message of Western observers.
Western estimates put the number of troops involved at 100,000, far above the 13,000 troops Moscow reported. The Vienna Document 2011 requires the presence of OSCE observers for exercises involving troops exceeding that figure. NATO has said it will send three monitors to the region for “visitors’ days,” but voiced concern over obtaining wider access.
Some in the West also fear Russia could leave troops and military equipment in Belarus.
“For the Russian troops being sent to Belarus, this is a one-way ticket,” Estonian Defense Minister Margus Tsahkna told Reuters in April.
Yet people dwelling in the eastern Baltic regions seem remarkably unperturbed by the impending presence of troops from Moscow. Few residents in Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian border towns show any signs of fear at the prospect of military aggression. Russians and locals live together peacefully, they say.
‘We are European’
The Latvian town of Aluksne is less than 40 kilometers from the Russian village of Laura. In the country’s south, Daugavpils lies just 36 kilometers from the Belarusian town of Urbany, while the northeastern Estonian city of Narva is just 3 kilometers — less than an hour on foot — from the Russian town of Ivangorod.
In all three areas, native residents and those of Russian descent show little concern.
“It’s not dangerous,” says 24-year-old Estonian-Russian serviceman Boris Medveznikov in Narva. “You have been misinformed about our neighbors … Russia is very strong. But we are European.”
An antiques shop owner in the city, who goes only by the name Natalia, also describes the town as “peaceful.”
“Estonia and the Baltic states … they say that Russia is aggressive and wants to occupy the Baltic states, but to Russia the territories are useless,” says 21-year-old Aleksandr Stepanov, a student from Narva studying at Tartu University in the southeast.
They may not be experts in geopolitics, but the calm mood among locals close to the Russian border stands in stark contrast with the alarmist message of Western observers.
With geographic distance, fears become exponentially worse.
“From far away, the situation in Estonia or the Baltic countries seems worse than what it actually is, living here,” says Merilin Piipuu, who manages the Museum of Occupations in Tallinn, Estonia.
Asked if he expects war to break out, Rokas Pukinskas, the spokesperson of the Lithuanian state border guard service, responds, “Absolutely not.”
Neither does Latvia see Zapad 2017 as a “direct military threat,” the Latvian ministry of foreign affairs said in a written statement to POLITICO.
Still, it is keeping a watchful eye on regional developments. “Its scenarios and proximity to our borders are causing a certain tension,” it said in emailed comments.
“During the Zapad 2017 exercise, we cannot rule out activities involving hybrid threats directed against the Baltic States, including aggressive propaganda and fake news, manipulations with the public opinion, cyber-attacks and others.”
Belarus has invited two Latvian observers, the ministry added, saying it hopes they will be granted “full opportunities” to evaluate the exercise.
Testing the alliance
Historically, the Baltics have been vulnerable to Russian aggression. Following the war in Georgia in 2008 and the annexation of Crimea in 2014, experts and officials in Washington and London have kept a wary eye on the area. Headlines freely speculate about the potential for outright war.
“Russia is not organizing defensive operations but instead an offensive threat, testing how serious we are about protecting the members of NATO,” Jonathan Eyal, international director of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a London-based think tank, told NBC at the beginning of August.
Tanks participate in the most recent Zapad military exercise in Belarus in 2013 | Alexey Druginyn/EPA
The concern is rooted in the potential for real danger. In October last year, the U.S. military-linked RAND corporation assessed that NATO’s forces in Russia could not successfully defend its “most exposed” members, and that “the longest it has taken Russian forces to reach the outskirts of the Estonian and/or Latvian capitals of Tallinn and Riga, respectively, is 60 hours.”
Writing in Harvard University’s “Russia Matters,” the scholar Simon Saradzhyan points out that “Russia’s three most recent foreign military interventions have indeed been preceded by some deployments masked as military exercises.”
“If something big will happen — it will happen so. But to say it’s dangerous? No. We don’t feel it here” — Vita Dravniece, Aluksne tourist board employee
If Russia does indeed want to test NATO’s commitments by provoking one of them into triggering Article 5 — the mutual defense clause — the alliance could fragment if it fails to follow through with an armed response.
In July, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence reassured the Baltics: “We stand with the people and nations of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, and we always will.” But doubts remain about President Donald Trump’s commitment to the alliance he called “obsolete” on the campaign trail in 2016.
And yet, despite the uncertainty, confidence in NATO persists in the region itself. Many people still don’t see any tension between the “native” population and Russians.
Protestors in Minsk demonstrate against Zapad earlier this month | Tatyana Zenkovich/EPA
“It’s normal, friendly,” says one Latvian street sweeper in Aluksne, northeastern Latvia, adding: “We have NATO; we’re not scared.”
Locals often visit their Russian neighbors across the border, says Vita Dravniece, who works for the town’s tourism board.
“They are going to Russia for gas, sugar, soap — they say they have good relationships with the Russians,” she says. “If something big will happen — it will happen so. But to say it’s dangerous? No. We don’t feel it here.”
This article was corrected to remove a reference to the Zapad exercise as the first of its kind since the annexation of Crimea. Russia conducted a large-scale Russian military exercise in 2016 called Kavkaz.
Aliide Naylor is a British journalist and editor, and the author of a book on Russia and the Baltic states to be published in 2018.