Putin Ally Predicts Baltic States Will Fall to Russia in 15 Minutes of War

A Russian media pundit and an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested during a recent TV appearance that the Baltic states would fall to Moscow in 15 minutes in a hypothetical future conflict.

On Saturday, Julia Davis, founder of the watchdog group, Russian Media Monitor, shared a clip to X, the platform previously known as Twitter, from a program hosted by prominent Russian propagandist Vladimir Solovyov, in which he and a panel of guests celebrated the supposed expansion of the country's "empire."

"State TV pundits on Vladimir Solovyov's show rejoiced that the Russian empire is expanding and expressed their amazement at the 'stupid' Westerners who still can't figure out modern Russia, which has been 'kicking their ass for centuries,'" Davis wrote in a post describing the clip.

Among the panel of guests was Stanislav Krapivnik, a Russian-American military affairs analyst who previously served in the U.S. Army before defecting to Russia in the '90s. At one point, Krapivnik suggested that the Baltic states—the former Soviet Union territories of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—would be the next target of Russia and that they would fall in short order.

"We want the world. Preferably, all of it," Krapivnik said, as translated by Russian Media Monitor. "And that's where we're going. Right now, the Russian empire is growing back. We're coming back. The Baltics will be next. They say, they're ready for a war with Russia. How long will that take? About 15 minutes."

The three nations that comprise the Baltic states joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in March 2004, and have since become major focal points for the alliance's attempts to maintain strength against potential aggression from Russia. Throughout the Russian invasion of Ukraine that began in February 2022, the states have worked to bolster their defenses, as Russian leaders have intimated a desire to retake more Soviet-era territories.

Newsweek reached out to defense experts via email for comment.

Despite Krapivnik's confidence, an armed conflict with any of the Baltic states would be complicated by their NATO membership. Article 5 of the organization's treaty states that an attack on one member nation is considered an attack against all of them, and that the other members will provide military assistance in the ensuing conflict. A war with the Baltics would, therefore, result in a much broader conflict.

In a recent report for the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI), Russia expert Pavel Baev wrote that the war in Ukraine has had a major impact on Moscow's ability to maintain a military presence near its borders with the Baltics.

"Whatever the scope of the outcome of the war, Russia will not be able to rebuild a position of military superiority in the Baltic theater or even to set an approximate balance of forces with NATO, which is implementing a new plan to strengthen its posture in this reconfigured direction," he wrote.