Will Russia attack Baltics? Experts warn of invasion as early as 2027

A think tank said Russia would be able to rebuild its forces after a ceasefire in Ukraine and warned of the cost of US withdrawal from the Western alliance.

Invasion on his mind? Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during a joint media statement with Malaysia's Prime Minister in Moscow this week. Picture: Pool / AFP

Russia could rebuild its military to invade other European nations as early as 2027 if a ceasefire is agreed in Ukraine later this year, according to a report by a security think tank.

The International Institute for Strategic Studies said President Putin has put Russia on a “war footing” and could test Nato’s commitment to Article 5 — the cornerstone of mutual defence — by attacking a Baltic state in just two years.

The IISS, which is headquartered in London, laid out the stark choices facing European leaders over defence spending after President Trump threatened to withdraw US support from Nato.

It would cost European nations $1 trillion over 25 years to compensate for the withdrawal of US forces. They would have to buy 400 fighter jets and 20 destroyers to withstand a Russian attack. Nato members would also need to recruit 128,000 soldiers to replace US troops.

“European allies can no longer assume that the US will provide the necessary military support to defend the continent against Russian aggression,” the authors wrote.

In the run-up to the Nato summit in the Hague next month, Trump has cast doubt on America’s willingness to defend allies who “don’t pay”. He has demanded that all Nato members raise their defence spending to 5 per cent of GDP, an increase of hundreds of billions of pounds.

The IISS report is based on an assumption that a ceasefire ends the war in Ukraine later this year and the US begins withdrawing its military from Europe to concentrate on the threat posed by China in the Indo-Pacific.

Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, the chief of the defence staff, has previously said it would take Russia ten years to rebuild its military because of the extraordinary losses suffered in Ukraine.

However, the IISS authors found that Russia could recover to its pre-invasion strength much sooner. “Russia could be in a position to pose a significant military challenge to Nato allies, particularly the Baltic states, as early as 2027,” they said.

They pointed to President Putin spending a projected 7.5 per cent of GDP on defence this year and said Russia’s “ability to reconstitute its forces quickly should not be underestimated”. Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia, formerly part of the Soviet Union, are widely seen as the most likely place Putin would test the underlying doctrine outlined in Article 5 of the Nato treaty, which states that an attack on one ally is an attack on all.

Given the threat, European countries need to increase investment to “Cold War levels”, when defence spending averaged more than 3 per cent of GDP, to compensate for the loss of US equipment, according to the report.

However, it said European defence companies would find it difficult to re-equip Nato’s air forces and navies within the next decade because of a lack of industrial capacity.

It concluded that European leaders were “likely to struggle to find the money required to fund the current level of US military capability provided to Nato”.

The Times