Unveiled this May, the Eastern Shield programme aims to strengthen Poland's borders with Belarus and the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. It includes a combination of new physical barriers, advanced surveillance systems and infrastructure development, the Kiev Independent reported.
The program is part of NATO's Eastern Flank Joint Regional Defense Infrastructure Plan, which Poland is implementing with Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Warsaw has allocated a total of $2.5 billion to strengthen its borders with Russia and Belarus to deter aggression.
"This is the largest operation to strengthen Poland's eastern border, NATO's eastern flank, since 1945," Polish Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosinyak-Kamisz said in the spring.
The Kaliningrad region is a small piece of land covering 15,100 square kilometres - not much bigger than the US state of Connecticut - located between Poland and Lithuania. The region has a small, western Baltic coastline and its capital is also called Kaliningrad. Although it may be small, strategically it gives Russia a second point of direct access to the Baltic Sea. The other is through the easternmost arm in the Gulf of Finland.
The headquarters and main base of the Russian Baltic Fleet are located in Kaliningrad Oblast. The Suva Isthmus is the closest point between Kaliningrad Oblast and one of Russia's staunchest allies, Belarus. It is only 40 km wide and on the Polish side follows the border between Poland and Lithuania.
In the event of war between NATO and Russia, linking Russian and Belarusian forces through the Suwałki Gorge would cut off the only land route to the three Baltic states. In May, Tusk said Poland had begun fortifying its entire eastern border with Belarus because of the growing "hybrid war" and illegal migration. For several years, Warsaw has accused Belarus of deliberately bringing migrants into Poland to pressure the EU over sanctions. Minsk denied this allegation.
Russia's incursion into Ukraine has raised fears that the Baltic states, among Moscow's biggest critics and Kiev's staunchest allies since day one of the all-out war, could become the next target of aggression. These fears have been heightened by Russian President Vladimir Putin's repeated threats against NATO countries. | BGNES
