The Suwałki Gap: could a war between NATO and Russia start over its control?

The Suwałki Gap: could a war between NATO and Russia start over its control?
© EPA-EFE/Tomasz Waszczuk   |   Military show during the meeting of Prime Minister of the Republic of Poland Mateusz Morawiecki and Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of National Defense Mariusz Blaszczak with the soldiers of the multinational battle group eFP NATO at the training ground in Orzysz, North Poland, 03 July 2022.

With NATO-Russia relations at their lowest level in history, following the latter’s invasion of Ukraine, a stretch of land connecting Poland to Lithuania has come into focus. The Suwałki Gap borders Russia’s Kaliningrad enclave. It could be a tempting target, as its control would help Russia cut NATO’s land bridge to its Baltic members. It could also be used, this time by the Alliance, to further isolate Kaliningrad. Is the Suwałki Gap the powder keg between NATO and Russia?

From idyllic hideout to “the most dangerous place in the world”

If someone is going on vacation in Poland and is looking for a secluded, beautiful, and quiet corner surrounded by wild, stunning nature, he should definitely go to the Suwałki region. I went there during the summer with my friends in my college years. We would build a camp by the lake, dig a trench that served as a toilet, live without electricity for two or three weeks. We had to walk 5 kilometers to the nearest store. Nowadays, there are many small, cozy guesthouses and agritourism farms. "If you want to go offline and cut yourself off from everyday problems, you must go there", I would have said a year ago. Today, that north-eastern corner of Poland is often called the most dangerous place in the world. This is because this border zone connecting Poland and Lithuania (called Suwałki Gap or Corridor) is seen as a potential flashpoint for confrontation between Russia and NATO. But maybe its real strategic value is overrated and limited? We are talking about a 100-kilometer long stretch of land, and after Finland and Sweden join NATO, the land border of the North Atlantic Alliance with Russia will increase by 1,350 kilometers. What should worry us more?

The most vulnerable stretch of NATO land

Named after a town in northeastern Poland, the Suwałki Gap is the area surrounding the Polish–Lithuanian land border, sandwiched between the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad and Belarus. It is not contiguous with mainland Russia. According to the prevailing narrative, the Suwałki Gap is strategically important because it connects continental European NATO with the Baltic states, making it the only land bridge that NATO ground forces can use to reinforce the Baltic states from Poland in the case of a military contingency involving Russia. The logic is that Russia could close the gap through physical occupation or long-range interdiction to prevent those reinforcements from reaching the Baltic states, thus isolating them.

A 2022 Foreign Policy essay claimed that the Suwałki Gap is “NATO’s weakest point”. Time Magazine called it Europe’s “most vulnerable stretch of land”. NBC News ran a story titled “Why the Suwalki Gap Keeps Top US General in Europe Up at Night” (the general being former US Army Europe commander Ben Hodges) and recently Politico published an article about the region with a sinister title: The most dangerous place on earth. Security experts have also consistently emphasized the vulnerabilities of the Suwałki Gap. During the Belarusian migrant crisis in the summer of 2021, some observers thought it was not at all coincidental that Belarus was forcing migrants into Poland near the Gap. Now we know that Belarus’s dictatorial leader, Alexander Lukashenko, is closely cooperating with Putin during the war in Ukraine and is willing to let Russia use his country as a launchpad for another invasion.

The EU wants to monitor the flow of goods to Suwałki Gap. Russia threatened to retaliate

The military threat from Russia directed at the Baltic states made headlines again in June, when Lithuania, as a result of EU sanctions, significantly limited the transit of goods from Russia (via Belarus) to the Kaliningrad Oblast (the Russian exclave on the Baltic Sea has borders only with EU countries - Poland and Lithuania). Russia has been banned from transporting steel to the European Union for over a month now. A ban on the transit of coal will enter into force soon, and on December 5th it will become applicable to crude oil and petroleum products. Thus, the Lithuanian authorities have banned the transit of many goods (the restrictions apply to around 30% of goods such as cement, steel, alcohol, caviar, and other luxury goods) to the Kaliningrad Oblast by rail across the territory of Lithuania. Moscow threatened Lithuania with "decisive action", and the governor of the Kaliningrad Oblast, Anton Alikhanov, announced a blockade of shipping traffic in the Baltic Sea. Lithuania's Minister of Economy, Aušrinė Armonaitė, announced on July 11 that Vilnius was not afraid of threats by Moscow and was used to them. A few days later, the European Commission clarified the Kaliningrad transit, noting (which at the same time means withdrawing from the original position) that the transport of sanctioned goods is prohibited only by car. Rail transport is allowed but must be subject to the necessary controls. Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte announced that the transit of goods through Lithuania to the Russian exclave will continue with restrictions until a new control procedure is established. At the same time, it announced that it would not be possible to return to the situation from before June 16, when all goods could be transported in transit to the Kaliningrad Oblast (this applies in particular to military technologies). "As explained by the European Commission, the transit of certain authorized goods will be subject to even more detailed control to make sure that these goods are actually intended for the needs of the Kaliningrad Oblast or that goods traveling in the opposite direction have not been delivered to the Kaliningrad without sanctions," Simonyte said.

The European Commission has allowed Russia to transport sanctioned goods by rail to and from the Kaliningrad Oblast through the territory of the European Union, but only for the needs of this exclave and in reasonable quantities. Under these rules, Lithuania and other EU Member States will have to check that transit volumes are within the levels established over the past three years to ensure that sanctioned goods transported to Kaliningrad correspond to actual local demand and are not exported to EU countries.

NATO’s strenthening of its Eastern flank

On Monday (July 25th), the presidents of Poland and Lithuania - Andrzej Duda and Gitanas Nausėda started two-day consultations on the situation in the region at the summer residence of the Polish president on the Baltic Sea. The meeting was planned during the recent visit of the two leaders to the Suwałki Gap, when both presidents inspected the mobile command post of the Multinational Division North East in Szypliszki near the Lithuanian border. "Multinational battalion groups stationed in the Suwałki Corridor are the allied guarantee of security for the region, which will be soon strengthened up to 300,000 soldiers," said Andrzej Duda at the beginning of July. Until recently, the soldiers of the North Atlantic Alliance present here were part of the „enhanced Forward Presence", but since the NATO summit in Madrid they have been renamed "enhanced Forward Defense".

After Russia's annexation of Crimea (2014), NATO allies agreed to implement the Readiness Action Plan (RAP) in order to further NATO’s force posture and to respond swiftly to the fundamental changes in the security environment on NATO's borders and further afield. That’s why NATO's member states agreed in 2016 to deploy four multinational battalion battle groups to areas most likely to be attacked - soldiers were based in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland, and led by the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, and the United States.

With the invasion and ongoing war in Ukraine, NATO has established four more multinational battalion battle groups in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia. The establishment of NATO’s enhanced Forward Presence helped turn a basic concept of a Regional Land Component Command into a practical reality, including not only the multinational battalions but also two multinational divisions and four home defence brigades. Together, these decisions are the biggest reinforcement of Alliance collective defence in a generation.

A threat that goes both ways: NATO too could use the Suwałki Gap against Russia

As much as the location of the US-led Enhanced Forward Presence (eFP) Battlegroup in Orzysz, Poland (about a two-hour drive from the Lithuanian border) makes sense given its proximity to Kaliningrad Oblast and Belarus, some defense analysts say there are good reasons to think that some of the concerns surrounding the Suwałki Gap are overstated.

Firstly, they ask why Russia should even close the Suwałki Corridor that is heavily guarded by international troops and attack the Baltic countries? A major assault on Latvia, Estonia or Lithuania would almost inevitably precipitate the invocation of Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which might create escalatory dynamics that the Kremlin could find too difficult to control.

Secondly – asks the defense expert Aleksander Łanoszka – does it make sense to be guided by state borders in the event of a military confrontation with Putin? “Talk of the Suwałki Gap is reminiscent of Cold War discussions of the Fulda Gap in West Germany. NATO’s preoccupation with the Fulda Gap arose out of the perception that Warsaw Pact tanks could use the lowlands around the Vogelsberg mountain range to plunge into West Germany. But no such natural features are found in the Suwałki Gap”, he says.
Thirdly, analysts note that dangers associated with the Suwałki Gap cut both ways. NATO forces can just as well threaten Russian military assets in the region, especially those in Kaliningrad. „In the event of open conflict, Kaliningrad is as much at risk of isolation and blockade by NATO as the Baltic states are by Russia. And indeed, logistical problems could hamper Russian efforts to close the gap. These logistical issues could include the deficient vehicle maintenance, insecure communications, poor command and control, and inadequate provisioning of the sort seen in the early stages of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine”, says Wojciech Lorenz from the Polish Institute of International Affairs.

Many analysts emphasize that the Suwałki Gap is at least as much a problem for Russia as it may be for NATO. Their concerns about the threat from Kremlin go far beyond the narrow corridor connecting Lithuania and Poland: Russian long-range strike weapons that could target command and control structures do not depend on the closure of the Suwałki Gap for effectiveness.

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