Ukraine war: Why the Baltic states on NATO’s frontline with Russia are urging their allies to ‘wake up’
The Baltic states have an urgent message for the UK and other NATO allies about the threat posed by Russia: “Wake up! It won’t stop in Ukraine.”
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are teaching more of their citizens how to fight and have even announced plans to build a defensive line, including bunkers, along hundreds of miles of border that separates their territories from their much larger neighbour.
Now, as concern grows within NATO about the potential for large-scale conflict returning to Europe, Sky News has travelled from northeast Estonia to southwest Lithuania to hear from soldiers, civilians and politicians who are preparing for a war they hope never to fight.
As former members of the Soviet Union, the Baltics have been sounding the alarm about the existential menace posed by Moscow ever since they joined the NATO alliance two decades ago.
Back then, though, no one really listened.
Instead, the UK and other allies were focused on the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan – countering insurgents and Islamist militants is a very different type of fight than a conventional war against a peer enemy like Russia.
Adding to a collective erosion in NATO’s defences, many European states, including Britain, significantly reduced stockpiles of Cold War-era weapons, such as tanks, artillery and ammunition, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, mistakenly believing they no longer needed to be ready to fight a war of survival at a moment’s notice.
Russia’s earlier invasion of Ukraine in 2014, with the capture of Crimea and seizure of swathes of the Donbas, started to change that calculation – but only very slowly.
People in Moscow show their support for Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. Pic: Reuters
The concept of ‘deterrence by denial’
The alliance agreed to bolster its defences along the eastern flank of the Baltic states and Poland, with the deployment in 2017 of units of allied troops to all four countries – around 800 soldiers to each nation.
But this was done relatively cautiously – to minimise the risk of triggering an escalation of tensions directly between Moscow and the West as plenty of NATO states, including France and Germany, still had relatively close ties with Russia and did a lot of business.
As a result, the limited mission was not designed to prevent an invasion, but rather to provide a “tripwire” should Russian forces attack that would trigger a much larger allied response to then push them back out.
However, Vladimir Putin’s full-scale war in Ukraine on 24 February 2022 fundamentally altered that thinking too.
The allies realised once Russian troops had entered a country it would take a lot more effort to eject them, so they agreed to beef up their eastern defences even more and expanded them into four other nations.
The aim today is to prevent Russia from ever trying to invade – a concept known as “deterrence by denial”.
Throughout this evolution, the loudest voices inside NATO – urging allies to go further, faster and raising the alarm about Russia’s intentions – have been Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
They have also been amongst the strongest supporters of Ukraine and have warned that if Moscow prevails over Kyiv, it will likely try to test NATO’s defences next.
The site of a shopping centre in Kyiv that was bombed weeks after Russia’s invasion in 2022. Pic: Reuters
A potential soft spot for any Russian attack
The city of Narva lies on Estonia’s northeastern tip – right next door to Russia.
A vast, medieval castle, with large, stone walls and an Estonian flag fluttering high, stands at one edge of the city, next to a river that marks the border.
On the opposite bank is a second, similarly grand, historic castle, but it flies a Russian flag.
A crossing point, called the Friendship Bridge, connects Narva with the Russian city of Ivangorod.
It is only open to pedestrians after the Russian authorities closed their end to vehicle traffic for construction work at the start of February.
A historic castle in Estonia flies a Russian flag
Arnold Vaino, a police officer with the Estonian border guard, walked us on to the bridge, stopping just short of a red post that marks the halfway point and the start of Russia.
He recalled how he felt on the day the Kremlin launched its all-out invasion of Ukraine.
“Nobody feels comfortable when you hear that war has started,” he said. “But [we don’t feel] scared, for sure. But you open your eyes more wide.”
In an indication of the complexities of the geography and history of the region, the majority of residents in Narva speak Russian and some are sympathetic to Moscow.
It makes the city a potential soft spot for any Russian attack under the guise of coming to the aide of the Russian nationals who live in Narva.
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Any such move, though, would trigger an allied response under one of the founding principles of NATO – an attack on one is an attack on all.
There is no sense of fondness for the Russian government in most other parts of Estonia, including an island of about 9,000 people off the country’s western coast.
NATO commanders believe that Hiiumaa island could be another potential target for Moscow in any war with the West because of its strategic location in the Baltic Sea.
If Russian troops were to seize the territory, they would potentially have the ability to block access to the sea and isolate the Baltic states.
Such a prospect is one that the islanders are doing all they can to deter.
Estonian volunteers urge British civilians to learn to fight
We met a unit of citizen soldiers, faces painted army green, as they practised ambushes with rifles in the forest.
The volunteers – many of them middle-aged dads and the odd mum – are dubbed “the SAS” because they train on Saturdays and Sundays.
Estonia’s weekend warriors are knowns as the ‘SAS’ because they train on Saturdays and Sundays
They said British civilians should also consider getting off their sofas and learning how to fight.
“It’s wrong to think that somebody else is coming to fight your war if you are not ready to defend yourself,” said Major Tanel Kapper, who commands the Estonian Defence League forces on the island.
Estonian military chiefs have doubled the size of their territorial defence force – the people who would support the much smaller professional army in a crisis – to 20,000 personnel after what Russia did in Ukraine two years ago.
That number comprises about 10,000 Defence League volunteers and the new addition of some 10,000 former conscript soldiers who are part of the military reserve.
‘We will kill as many of you as possible’
Polishing part of a rifle back at his base, a volunteer called Taavi, a father of two, said he decided to join the Defence League on Hiiumaa island along with about 14 friends last year in part as a response to the Ukraine war.
The construction worker said he did not want conflict, but was ready for combat if Russia invades.
“I have to take the weapon and try to protect my family, my home,” he said.
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A wake-up call from the Baltics?
Major Kapper had a warning for Moscow: “It will be a bloody mess if you come here. We will definitely kill as many of you as possible.”
As for whether he had a message to other NATO countries like the UK that maybe are not doing as much to bolster their defences, the officer said: “To wake up. It won’t stop in Ukraine. If we don’t stop them, then they will come further and further.”
Latvian volunteers train at a base near Belarus
Latvia bulking up its military due to Russia threat
There is a similar sense of urgency in next door Latvia, which reintroduced conscription last year after becoming the only Baltic state to halt mandatory military service in 2006.
The country plans to double the size of its armed forces – professionals and reserves – to 61,000 by 2032.
“War [in Ukraine] is already happening, so it’s not a question: is Russia going to be aggressive? It already is aggressive,” said Krisjanis Karins, the Latvian foreign minister.
“The point of the draft is to beef up capable and equipped and trained reservists,” he told Sky News in an interview on the sidelines of a major security conference in Munich in February.
“It’s not replacing the professional army, it’s augmenting the professional army.”
Asked whether it would make a difference if the UK instated conscription, Mr Karins, a former prime minister, said: “I think it would make a difference if any European country and of course the larger countries, it would make a bigger difference.”
Sky News was invited to visit a training base in southeast Latvia, close to its border with Belarus, a close Russian ally, where a mix of conscripts and other recruits were going through a three-week basic training course with the National Guard.
Latvian volunteers would offer support to the regular military during a time of war
‘Every man needs to at least try military life’
The National Guard is a branch of the armed forces that is made up of volunteers. At a time of war, they would offer support to the professional military.
“Bam! Bam! Bam!” the recruits shouted, rifles raised, mimicking the sound of gunshots, as they practised a response to an ambush on a muddy shooting range surrounded by forest.
Eduard, 18, was one of seven conscripts among the group of about 20 on the range. All seven were voluntary conscripts, rather than being ordered to serve.
“I think that every man in the world needs to at least try military life,” said Eduard.
A Latvian general explained how conscription is about much more than simply generating fresh boots on the ground – it is also about growing a sense of national service and a desire for each citizen to do their bit to help protect the country.
“Everyone has the right to serve – an obligation to serve – the nation,” said Major General Andis Dilans, the chief of the joint staff of the National Armed Forces, Latvia’s second most senior commander.
“This is really the cornerstone of democracy,” he said in an interview in the capital Riga.
“Therefore, we looked at this not just as a war-fighting force of the conscription, but looking at the connection between the public and the military in case of crisis, in case of war.”
A Lithuanian military training exercise in a forest
How Lithuania borders a potential flashpoint
The final leg of our journey took us to the southwestern edge of Lithuania, which borders a heavily fortified Russian exclave called Kaliningrad.
The Russian territory also shares a border with Poland, another NATO state.
It means the only way for vehicles, such as lorries loaded with goods, coaches carrying passengers, or ordinary cars to travel between the exclave and mainland Russia is by transiting through Lithuania and into Belarus.
The crossing was calm when we visited, with a long queue of lorries on the Russian side, waiting to be allowed into Lithuania.
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A border guard said the number of vehicles – about 300 per day in total, moving in and out – had roughly halved since 2022 because Western sanctions had limited the types of goods that are permitted to be transited through Lithuania.
Communication between the guards on either side of a long wire, fence, topped in sections with barbed wire and bristling with cameras, had also been all but severed.
In the past, officials, who might have been stationed at the crossing point for two or three decades, would often speak with their Russian counterparts but that has stopped completely.
A mobile phone line still exists that can be called in an emergency, but the guard said that the Russian side does not tend to pick up.
The Kaliningrad border
Another potential flashpoint is a nearby strip of land, about 60 miles long, that connects Kaliningrad with Belarus and is bordered by Lithuania and Poland.
It is called the Suwalki Gap.
The concern among NATO commanders is that if Russia were to capture the corridor, it would provide another way to cut off access to the Baltic states.
Gitanas Nauseda, Lithuania’s president, summed up the response to the threat next door.
“All Baltic countries, Poland and other countries of the eastern flank of the NATO do a lot in order to utilise all the possibilities of [the] collective defence system, called NATO,” he said in an interview.
“But we also do a lot individually by increasing our defence spending, by closely cooperating with our neighbours and my country is especially active in this field.”
It is why a growing number of citizens in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are volunteering to serve.
But their ability to deter Russia may depend on whether the citizens of other allies follow suit.
Iran’s foreign ministry has told Sky News there is still a chance for peace talks with the United States.
In an interview in Iran’s foreign ministry in Tehran, a senior Iranian official said despite the attacks on his country by America and Israel, back-channel efforts are under way to restart the search for a diplomatic solution.
The comments will be seen as an olive branch for the Trump administration to seize as it explores a diplomatic way forward.
Sky News is one of only a handful of foreign news organisations allowed access to Iran following its short and devastating war with Israel.
We also filmed the impact of Israel’s attacks on ordinary Iranians in Tehran.
In the wake of a ceasefire declared by Donald Trump, Esmaeil Baqaei, the Iranian foreign ministry spokesman, said the US must show it is genuine in its desire for peace.
“Diplomacy must not be abused or used as a tool for deception or for simply a sort of psychological warfare against their adversaries.”
Iran felt diplomacy had been betrayed, he said. US-Iranian talks were on the verge of reconvening when Israel attacked his country.
And America had breached international law in its support of what he called “Zionist aggression”.
But Mr Baqaei said “diplomacy never ends, there are contacts, indirectly. My minister is talking to Oman, Qatar and others”.
President Trump says he is ready to talk with Iran, but major stumbling blocks need to be overcome.
The US wants Iran to give up nuclear enrichment completely. Iran has long insisted it has the right to carry on.
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A residential building hit by Israel in Tehran
A residential building hit by Israel in Tehran
Across town, we witnessed the impact of Israel’s attacks in Gisha, an upmarket neighbourhood of Tehran.
Israel claims its attacks on Iranian figures were precision-targeted. In reality they appear to have been far from surgical.
The airstrike came at 10.30 Friday morning two weeks ago. It ripped a hole through four floors of reinforced concrete in the residential apartment block.
The target may have been a nuclear scientist living there, but everyone in the building is now without a home. Engineers say it will almost certainly need to be torn down.
The mood in the Iranian capital seems subdued and tense.
Iranians fear Israelis will renew their air campaign despite the ceasefire, but the foreign ministry spokesperson said they “will respond” to any Israeli attack.
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There is widespread resentment of the leadership after nationwide social unrest and massive economic problems.
But the Israeli attacks have rallied many Iranians around their government all the same.
They had hoped diplomacy with America could deliver a new deal and an end to sanctions, then Israel began its 12-day aerial onslaught and the US joined in.
Iranians hope somehow talks can be restarted, but they also know the chances of progress are, for now at least, not great.
Sky News analysis shows that aid distributions by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) are associated with a significant increase in deaths.
Warning: This article contains descriptions of people being killed and images of blood on a hospital floor.
The US and Israeli-backed group has been primarily responsible for aid distribution since Israel lifted its 11-week blockade of the Gaza Strip last month.
The GHF distributes aid from four militarised Secure Distribution Sites (SDSs) – three of which are in the far south of the Gaza Strip. Under the previous system, the UN had distributed aid through hundreds of sites across the territory.
According to Gaza’s health ministry, 600 Palestinians have been killed while seeking aid from GHF sites, which charities and the UN have branded “death traps”.
The UN put the figure at 410, but has not updated this number since 24 June. Both the UN and health ministry source their figures from hospitals near the aid sites.
Speaking to Sky News, GHF chief Johnnie Moore disputed that these deaths were connected with his organisation’s operations.
“Almost anything that happens in the Gaza Strip is going to take place in proximity to something,” he said.
“Our effort is actually working despite a disinformation campaign, that is very deliberate and meant to shut down our efforts.
“We just want to feed Gazans. That’s the only thing that we want to do.”
However, new analysis by Sky’s Data & Forensics Unit shows that deaths in Gaza have spiked during days with more GHF distributions.
On days when GHF conducts just two distributions or fewer, health officials report an average of 48 deaths and 189 injuries across the Gaza Strip.
On days with five or six GHF distributions, authorities have reported almost three times as many casualties.
Out of 77 distributions at GHF sites between 5 June and 1 July, Sky News found that 23 ended in reports of bloodshed (30%).
At one site, SDS4 in the central Gaza Strip, as many as half of all distributions were followed by reports of fatal shootings.
Sky News spoke to one woman who had been attending SDS4 for 10 days straight.
“I witnessed death first-hand – bodies lay bleeding on the ground all around me,” says Huda.
“This is not right. Food should be delivered to UN warehouses, and this entire operation must be shut down.”
Huda told Sky News that she has been trying to obtain aid from SDS4, in the central Gaza Strip, for the past 10 days
Huda says that the crowds are forced to dodge bombs and bullets “just to get a bag of rice or pasta”.
“You may come back, you may not,” she says. “I was injured by shrapnel in my leg. Despite that, I go back, because we really have nothing in our tent.”
One of the deadliest incidents at SDS4 took place in the early hours of 24 June.
According to eyewitnesses, Israeli forces opened fire as people advanced towards aid trucks carrying food to the site, which was due to open.
“It was a massacre,” said Ahmed Halawa. He said that tanks and drones fired at people “even as we were fleeing”. At least 31 people were killed, according to medics at two nearby hospitals.
Footage from that morning shows the floor of one of the hospitals, al Awda, covered in blood.
The IDF says it is reviewing the incident.
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Doctor’s final moments revealed
Issues of crowd control
Unnamed soldiers who served near the aid sites told Israeli newspaper Haaretz that they were instructed to use gunfire as a method of crowd control.
An IDF spokesperson told Sky News that it “strongly rejected” the accusations that its forces were instructed to deliberately shoot at civilians.
“To be clear, IDF directives prohibit deliberate attacks on civilians,” the spokesperson said, adding that the incidents are “being examined by the relevant IDF authorities”.
Eyewitness testimony and footage posted to social media suggest that crowd control is a frequent problem at the sites.
The video below, uploaded on 12 June, shows a crowd rushing into SDS1, in Gaza’s far southwest. What sounds like explosions are audible in the background.
Footage from the same site, uploaded on 15 June, shows Palestinians searching for food among hundreds of aid parcels scattered across the ground.
Sam Rose, the director of UNRWA operations in Gaza, describes the distribution process as a “free-for-all”.
“What they’re doing is they’re loading up the boxes on the ground and then people just rush in,” he says.
Sky News has found that the sites typically run out of food within just nine minutes. In a quarter of cases (23%), the food is finished by the time the site was due to officially open.
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Doctors on the frontline
Confusing communications
Sky News analysis suggests that the issue may be being compounded by poor communications from GHF.
Between 19 June and 1 July, 86% of distributions were announced with less than 30 minutes’ notice. One in five distributions was not announced at all prior to the site opening.
The GHF instructs Palestinians to take particular routes to the aid centres, and to wait at specified locations until the official opening times.
The map for SDS1 instructs Palestinians to take a narrow agricultural lane that no longer exists, while the maps for SDS2 and SDS3 give waiting points that are deep inside IDF-designated combat zones.
The maps do not make the boundaries of combat zones clear or specify when it is safe for Palestinians to enter them.
The same is true for SDS4, the only distribution site outside Gaza’s far south. Its waiting point is located 1.2 miles (2km) inside an IDF combat zone.
The official map also provides no access route from the northern half of Gaza, including Gaza City, across the heavily militarised Netzarim corridor.
“They don’t know what they’re doing,” says UNRWA’s Sam Rose.
“They don’t have anyone working on these operations who has any experience of operating, of administering food distributions because anyone who did have that experience wouldn’t want to be part of it because this isn’t how you treat people.”
Once the sites are officially open, Palestinians are allowed to travel the rest of the way.
The distance from waiting point to aid site is typically over a kilometre, making it difficult for Palestinians to reach the aid site before the food runs out.
The shortest distance is at SDS4 – 689m. At a pace of 4km per hour, this would take around 10 minutes to cover.
But of the 18 distributions at this site which were announced in advance, just two lasted longer than 10 minutes before the food ran out.
“We don’t have time to pick anything up,” says Huda, who has been visiting SDS4 for the past 10 days.
In all that time, she says, all she had managed to take was a small bag of rice.
“I got it from the floor,” she says. “We didn’t get anything else.”
More than 200 charities and non-governmental organisations have called for the closure of GHF and the reinstatement of previous, UN-led mechanisms of aid distribution.
In a joint statement issued on 1 July, some of the world’s largest humanitarian groups accused the GHF of violating international humanitarian principles. They said the scheme was forcing two million people into overcrowded, militarised zones where they face daily gunfire.
Additional reporting by OSINT producers Sam Doak and Lina-Serene.
The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.
World
Teens unable to walk, mothers with rash-covered babies: Kush is ruining lives – and made with ingredients shipped from the UK
A red shipping container sits on the tarmac of Sierra Leone’s Queen Elizabeth II Quay, under swinging cranes and towering stacks of similar steel boxes.
This one will likely be parked at the port permanently. The contents are suspected to be the ingredients of kush, the deadly synthetic drug ravaging Sierra Leone.
Sky News was given access to the container two weeks after it was seized.
“Preliminary testing has shown that these items are kush ingredients,” says the secretary of the Ports Authority, Martin George, as he points to the marked contraband in massive multicoloured Amazon UK bags and a large blue vat of strongly smelling acetone.
He adds: “Shipped from the United Kingdom.”
The container was selected for screening based on its origin. The UK is with the EU and South America on the list of places considered high risk for the import of illicit substances fuelling the drug trade in Sierra Leone and the region.
Kush has shaken this part of West Africa to its core – not just Sierra Leone but Liberia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau and the Gambia. It is highly addictive, ever-evolving and affordable.
The sprayed grey-green marshmallow leaves are rolled in a joint like marijuana and are extremely dangerous. Samples of the drug tested by researchers contained nitazens, one of the deadliest synthetic drugs in the world.
“It was a shock to find them in around half of the kush samples we tested, as at that point there was no public evidence they had reached Africa,” says Lucia Bird Ruiz-Benitez de Lugo from Global Initiative Against Transnational Organised Crime (GI-TOC) who independently tested kush from Sierra Leone.
“Nitazenes are among the deadliest drugs available on retail drug markets across the world – with one nitazene in kush in Freetown being 25 times stronger than fentanyl,” she added.
The shocking effects of its potency can be seen on the bodies of young men and women around Freetown. Teenagers with sores eating away at their legs, unable to walk. Mothers who smoked during pregnancy carrying sickly rash-covered infants. Young men drooling from the intense high and slumped over while still standing.
They are not the fringes of Sierra Leonean society but a growing demographic of kush users searching for an escape. People riddled by poverty and unemployment, living in the dark corners of a capital city which has endured a brutal civil war and Ebola epidemic in the last three decades alone.
An entire community of men and women of all ages is held together by kush addiction under a main road that cuts through the heart of Freetown.
They call themselves the “Under de Bridge family” and live in the shadows of the overpass, surrounded by the sewage and rubbish discarded by their neighbours.
One of them tells us the harsh conditions drive him to keep smoking kush even after losing more than 10 friends to the drug – killed by large infected sores and malnutrition.
Nearby, 17-year-old Ibrahim is pained by growing sores and says the drug is destroying his life.
“This drug is evil. This drug is bad. I don’t know why they gave me this drug in this country. Our brothers are suffering. Some are dying, some have sores on their feet. This drug brings destruction,” he says.
“Look at me – just because of this drug. I have sores on my feet.”
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Across a stream of sewage, a young mother expecting her second child cries from fear and anguish when I ask her about the risk of smoking while pregnant.
“Yes, I know the risk,” Elizabeth says, nodding.
“I’ll keep smoking while I live here but I have nowhere else to go. It helps me forget my worries and challenges.”
Life under the bridge is disrupted from its sleepiness by a yell. A plain-clothed police officer is chasing a child accused of selling kush.
The lucrative industry is absorbing all age groups and spreading rapidly to nearby countries – even passing through three different borders to reach the smallest nation in mainland Africa, The Gambia.
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Police hunt for kush dealers in West Africa
Gambian law enforcement has cracked down on spreading kush use with regular zero tolerance drug raids. The small population is extremely vulnerable and the country is yet to open its first rehabilitation centre. Rising xenophobia seems to be mostly directed at Sierra Leonean immigrants who they blame for smuggling kush into the country.
We spoke to one man from Sierra Leone who was arrested for dealing kush in The Gambia and spent a year in prison. He says that though he feels saddened other Sierra Leoneans are being alienated as a result of the trade he was involved in, he has no remorse for “following orders”.
“Do I feel guilty for selling it? No, I don’t feel guilty. I’m not using my money to buy the kush, people always give me money to get kush for them,” he tells Sky News anonymously.
“I needed a job. I needed to take care of my son.”
Gambia’s hardline approach has been credited with driving its local kush industry underground rather than eradicating it but is still hailed as the most impactful strategy in the region. Sierra Leone’s government told Sky News it needs help from surrounding countries and the UK to tackle the sprawling crisis.
Transnational crime experts like Lucia Bird Ruiz-Benitez de Lugo see the rise of kush as part of a global synthetic drugs network that requires a multi-national response.
“Coordinated action is urgently needed across the supply chain, particularly focused on nitazenes – the deadliest kush component,” says Ms Bird.
“Our research indicated that kush components are being imported to West Africa from countries in Asia and Europe, likely including the UK. All countries in the supply chain bear responsibility to act to mitigate the devastating and expanding impacts of kush across West Africa, a region with scarce resources to respond.”
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