Russia has been steadily reinforcing its military posture along the borders of NATO's Baltic Sea Region states, creating new army units, expanding its defense industrial base, and restructuring its military districts in direct response to Finland and Sweden joining the Alliance. The Polish Institute of International Affairs (PISM) laid out these findings in a major report titled "(Un)safe Waters: The Baltic Sea Region and the Redefinition of Security in Europe," published in March 2026.
As "Hvylya" reports, citing the PISM analysis, Russia disbanded its Western Military District in 2023, replacing it with the Moscow and Leningrad Military Districts. The Leningrad MD, focused squarely on NATO, now covers territory bordering the Baltic states, Poland, Finland, and Norway. A new 44th Army Corps was established in Petrozavodsk on the Finnish border in 2024, while the 6th Combined Arms Army near Estonia received two fresh motorized rifle divisions - the 68th in Luga and the 69th in Kamenka.
The report's authors stress that Russia's naval capabilities in the region remain largely intact despite heavy losses on land in Ukraine. The Baltic Fleet operates 54 combat ships, including vessels armed with Kalibr cruise missiles with a range exceeding 1,500 kilometers. In a conflict scenario, one of its primary tasks would be to "occupy or block the Danish Straits to prevent the Alliance from using the sea lanes between the Baltic and the North Sea," the researchers wrote. At the end of December 2025, the 336th Marine Brigade in Kaliningrad was upgraded to a full division.
The Northern Fleet presents an even more formidable challenge, with nearly 70 combat ships including 26 submarines. By the end of 2026, it is expected to receive three modern multipurpose submarines of the Severodvinsk/Yassen class armed with Zircon hypersonic missiles, along with three new frigates. The modernized Kirov II-class cruiser Admiral Nakhimov may also enter service, becoming the Russian Navy's new flagship.
According to intelligence assessments from Baltic and Nordic states cited in the report, Russia "will have credible capabilities to conduct offensive operations against one or more countries in the region" within three to five years. The rhetoric from Moscow has been escalating in parallel - officials from Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service have repeatedly referred to the Baltic states and Finland as "historical Russian lands" and described their defense spending increases as "militarization threatening Russia's strategic interests."
The PISM analysts assess that while a full-scale conventional attack remains unlikely in the near term, Russia could attempt a limited military operation using proxy forces, similar to the Crimea annexation model. Potential targets include Estonia or Latvia, where Russian-speaking communities make up roughly 30 and 35 percent of the population respectively, as well as Norway's Svalbard archipelago and the strategically sensitive Suwalki Gap on the Polish-Lithuanian border.
Also read: Cambridge Scholar Warns Against Abandoning NATO's 70-Year Division of Labor.