In 2021, in a number of my articles and interviews, I noted that Russia keeps on hatching a 2014 plan to seize the territories of Ukraine from Kharkiv to Odesa and push a land corridor – not just to the occupied Crimea, but further to its metastatic territory of Transnistria.

In the end, this is exactly what Russia is pursuing these days – this was the scenario they initially tried to implement, launching a full-blown invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Russia"s blitzkrieg, however, got bogged down pretty quickly.

Moscow intended to complete the occupation of Ukraine within 72 hours and expected that the reaction of the traditionally slow, clumsy, and over-bureaucratized international community would be untimely and that the West would simply resign itself to the Ukraine grab, limiting itself to superficial measures exclusively.

But everything turned out to be exactly the opposite. The blitzkrieg failed, and the West took measures of such extent that all Russia could do, out of hopelessness and rage, like a cornered rat, is attack peaceful cities and massively kill civilians across in Ukraine. Now, Russia has moved to jump at NATO . The most threatened nations today are the Baltic states.

The thing is that Vladimir Dzhabarov, First Deputy Head of the Russian Federation Council Committee on International Affairs, made a rather ambiguous statement: "Russia is going to de-Nazify NATO!"

One might think that the statement is nothing more than the subjective position of yet another Russian misanthropic politician, but in fact it"s not.

The fact is that Russia, one way or another, planned to go for confrontation with NATO once it"s done with occupying Ukraine. In particular, the plan was to initially seize the southeastern part of Ukraine and then, after a short pause, to occupy Moldova. After that, Russia would intensify its activity in the Baltic Sea. However, Western sanctions imposed on Russia are now accelerating this initially slower scenario.

The fact is that the Russia sanctions have left the Russian exclave, the Kaliningrad Oblast, in complete isolation. The Kremlin sees a direct threat to this territory and intends to lay down a land corridor from Belarus to the Kaliningrad Oblast – right through Lithuania.

Moscow is seriously looking into a forced march from the Belrausian cities of Grodno and Lida toward Alytus and Marijampole, to eventually reach the Kaliningrad Oblast through Vilkaviskis. Moscow plans to complete the mission within 48 hours, before taking time to consolidate positions and create an access denial zone.

Russia doesn"t believe NATO will apply Article 5 and start defending Lithuania, while the Russians will be justifying their breakthrough by the need to create a "humanitarian" land corridor to the Kaliningrad Oblast.

The only weak point in the said scenario is the lack of forces and means, a significant part of which has been amassed in the Ukrainian direction, which requires constant rotation of units involved to replace the decapitated forces.

But despite this nuance, just like it was with Ukraine, Russia will definitely not step back from this plot, even taking into account the assumption that it could become fatal for the country. After all, it was obvious to everyone in their right mind that the invasion of Ukraine would be a fatal meat grinder for the Russian army, but they still went in. Similarly, with the Baltic states, despite the obvious suicidal nature of the plan, it will be implemented anyway. Of that I"m sure.