Sergey Kotlov

I have reviewed the article “The Bear in the Baltics: Reassessing the Russian Threat in Estonia,” published by the European Council on Foreign Relations. Its authors, Jennifer Kavanagh and Jeremy Shapiro, conclude that Russia is currently incapable of carrying out a successful armed attack against Estonia and that the level of threat is exaggerated. This is precisely where the core problem of this analysis begins. The entire argument is built on theoretical models, force-balance calculations, and deterrence concepts, while completely ignoring the decisive factor of modern warfare: accumulated combat experience under real battlefield conditions. Today, only two states in the world possess actual experience in conducting high-intensity interstate war — Ukraine and Russia. All others, including Estonia and the vast majority of NATO members, rely on exercises, staff simulations, and doctrinal assumptions that have not been tested in full-scale combat. Estonia, despite its high level of preparation, lacks practical experience in: •conducting operations under conditions of sustained enemy artillery dominance and high fire density; •operating forces in an environment of persistent surveillance and strike capability enabled by tactical and operational-level UAVs; •maintaining logistics and command-and-control resilience under systematic fire strikes against rear infrastructure; •executing defensive operations and maneuver while continuously absorbing losses, degradation of units, and uninterrupted fire pressure; •adapting tactics, force organization, and command systems in real time, rather than after a completed training cycle. This is not a criticism of the Estonian Defence Forces. It is a statement of fact: combat experience cannot be substituted by doctrines, exercises, or alliance membership. A separate and particularly dangerous error in the article is the emphasis on Russia’s “exhaustion” through personnel losses. Russia is structurally insensitive to human losses as a constraint on warfare. Its military-political system is historically designed to: •sustain mass mobilization; •accept extremely high casualties as permissible; •substitute quality with quantity through forced rotation and replacement. Those who treat manpower losses as a decisive deterrent factor for Russia project Western assumptions onto an adversary to whom they do not apply — and this is precisely how wars are lost. The greatest damage done by this article is that it fosters a false sense of strategic confidence. It reassures decision-makers that Russia is “not ready,” “not capable,” or “will not dare.” This same logic underpinned strategic failures in both 2014 and 2022. The most dangerous assumption made by the authors is that war is the outcome of a rational cost-benefit calculation. In reality, Russia wages war according to a logic of political inevitability, imperial revisionism, and a willingness to accept virtually any cost. Russia will attack — this is not a question of capability, but of timing and conditions. And the longer European decision-making centers rely on such reassuring, detached analyses, the more severe the shock will be when reality disproves them.