It is obvious that the first strike by Russian troops will be launched from Belarusian territory and directed against the Baltic states, which are geographically separated from the major NATO countries and can be isolated from them. Moreover, their occupation would return operational space to the Baltic Fleet and make sea communications with the Kaliningrad region safer, and would also provide more guarantees for exporting Russian hydrocarbons from the ports of the Leningrad region.
The main blow would be aimed not at Estonia, whose eastern border is covered by large lakes, but at Latvia—in order to reach Riga or the Gulf of Riga and cut the Baltic into two parts, depriving the defending forces of maneuvering capacity and, at least in the Eastern Baltic, of supply and reinforcements. The strike would be launched from the Polotsk area. Simultaneously, a strike would be delivered from the Grodno area toward Kaunas and Klaipėda. It may be reinforced by a Russian strike on Kaunas from the territory of the Kaliningrad region in order to seize Klaipėda and prevent that port from being used to bring in reinforcements and military equipment. Another strike could be delivered from the Ashmyany area toward Vilnius because of that city’s tempting proximity to the border.
You may ask why I predict this with such confidence. Simply because Russian generals like to use the work of their Soviet predecessors. For example, the truly very successful and most effective operation of World War II in terms of results—Operation Bagration. It is enough to look at the maps of that operation.
In autumn 2015, after my next release, speaking at a conference in Warsaw under the auspices of the OSCE and commenting on the deployment of a motorized rifle brigade in Bryansk Oblast, I expressed the opinion that this brigade could be used against Ukraine for a strike along the right bank of the Dnipro toward Kyiv—something the Soviet Army did in the previous war. Only then it had to force the Dnipro with heavy losses in the Loyew area. Now it is possible to cross it and the Pripyat comfortably via bridges on the territory of Belarus. That is what the Russian invasion grouping did four years ago. Without that opportunity, a Russian blitzkrieg would have been impossible and the war against Ukraine would not have begun at all. Unfortunately, my forecast at the time came true seven years later, confirming the effectiveness of the approach. And now I have before me a book with maps of Operation Bagration—more precisely, its second, “Baltic” part—which makes the forecasting task easier.

IV. USE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS

This idea was allegedly discussed among the Russian general staff already back in the 2000s. The specific plans, if one believes what appeared in the independent press, were as follows: suddenly begin hostilities, seize as much territory as possible, and then, when NATO mobilizes to respond, deliver a nuclear strike in order—through negotiations with “spineless” frightened European politicians—to secure what was seized.
Now, when European politicians have shown qualities quite different from what was expected, the idea has emerged and is actively discussed in Russian quasi-military publications of a preventive nuclear strike on the deployment locations of NATO nuclear forces in Europe—in order not to receive “retaliation” after using nuclear weapons against NATO, for example, in the Baltics after a Russian invasion there. The most likely location for a Russian nuclear strike would be the Suwałki Corridor, to make it impossible to send reinforcements to the Baltics through it: the railway would be destroyed, the asphalt on the highways would burn, and everything would be littered with burning radioactive trees. Strikes are also possible at “chokepoints” of trans-Baltic routes, at places where reinforcements and material resources are concentrated. Russian generals now understand there will be retaliation and are looking for ways to avoid it—paradise is paradise, but one still wants to live. Ideas for how to prevent retaliation are actively discussed.