An intellectual and strategic panel titled Why Narva Is Not Next: Examining Assumptions About Baltic Vulnerability was successfully convened on Tuesday, July 7, 2026, as a core component of the prestigious Allies in Ankara program. The high-level intellectual event was organized through a collaborative framework involving Türkiye’s Communications Directorate, the Munich Security Conference, and the Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research, within the overarching framework of the 36th NATO summit. The panel, which attracted an audience of diplomats, defense analysts, and international journalists, was moderated by the Baltic International Centre for Security Policy and took place at the historic Ankara Palas. The roundtable discussion featured a distinguished lineup of Baltic diplomatic and intelligence figures, including Latvian Foreign Minister Baiba Braze, Lithuania’s Permanent Representative to NATO Darius Jauniskis, and Martin Roger, the political director at the Estonian Foreign Ministry.
During her address, Latvian Foreign Minister Baiba Braze provided a nuanced assessment of the contemporary threat environment emanating from the Kremlin. Braze asserted that while intelligence indicators suggest Russia is currently not militarily prepared or willing to launch a direct conventional challenge against NATO’s collective defense umbrella, Moscow remains highly willing to systematically engineer false dilemmas and grey-zone provocations designed to test the political cohesion of the trans-Atlantic alliance. Given this persistent unconventional friction, she strongly stressed that allied nations must not lose their seriousness, focus, or institutional discipline regarding long-term security and national defense architectures.
Reflecting on the internal structural transformations within the alliance over recent years, Braze noted that NATO has had an incredibly profound and positive impact on how individual allies work together, coordinate regional planning, prepare for multi-domain contingencies, and shape modernized defense plans. To sustain this defensive momentum, she urged the alliance to ensure that it comprehensively invests internally in domestic security infrastructure, border fortification, and localized intelligence cooperation. She emphasized the critical need for an alliance that deeply trusts itself as NATO, asserting that such internal trust and structural cohesion are the absolute foundational prerequisites to ensuring that collective deterrence remains completely functional and credible in the eyes of adversaries.
Furthermore, the Latvian Foreign Minister drew attention to the ongoing cognitive warfare being waged against frontline states. She revealed that Baltic societies have been systematically exposed to aggressive external interference and coordinated digital disinformation operations explicitly aimed at weakening public support for the Ukrainian people and driving geopolitical wedges within domestic populations. Addressing internal demographic vulnerabilities often cited by foreign analysts, Braze confidently stated that the people in her country, completely regardless of their specific linguistic or cultural origin, overwhelmingly desire to be an active, integrated part of the Latvian state. She added that despite differing ethnic backgrounds, the domestic population maintains a unified, resilient civic identity and a shared willingness to actively defend the sovereignty of the country against external aggression.
Offering a perspective from Vilnius, Lithuania’s Permanent Representative to NATO, Darius Jauniskis, leveled sharp criticisms against regional geopolitical configurations, focusing extensively on the relationship between Moscow and Minsk. Jauniskis stated unequivocally that Lithuanian defense and intelligence structures do not see Belarus as an independent or separate actor from Russia. Instead, he argued that the administration in Minsk has become entirely dependent on Russia’s energy supplies, financial bailouts, and political support, effectively turning the country into an extension of the Russian military district.
To illustrate the nature of the hybrid threats manifesting along Lithuania’s sovereign boundaries, Jauniskis referenced the recurring issue of meteorological balloons entering Lithuanian airspace from Belarusian territory. He explained that these low-tech aerial vehicles are frequently utilized by cross-border criminal networks to carry large quantities of smuggled cigarettes, but emphasized that their uncontrolled entry and unpredictable flight paths simultaneously cause serious national security problems by complicating radar tracking and potentially serving as test platforms for surveillance equipment. Jauniskis also alleged that both Russia and Belarus are continuously spreading revisionist state propaganda filled with false information regarding his country’s history, an algorithmic effort designed to undermine national pride and historical legitimacy.
Shifting the analytical focus to the digital and physical border defense of the northernmost Baltic state, Estonian official Martin Roger drew attention to the relentless cyber threats targeting his nation's infrastructure. Roger noted that Estonian state institutions are fighting this omnipresent digital threat on a daily basis, adding that public resilience and institutional adaptability have increased significantly as a direct result of these persistent cyber engagements. Addressing the central premise of the panel, Roger confidently asserted that Narva, Estonia’s third-largest city located directly on the heavily fortified Russian border, is definitely not Moscow’s next target.
He explained that the comprehensive defense architecture established by Tallinn has completely altered the risk-reward calculation for potential aggressors. He expressed his firm belief that the multi-layered deterrence they have built in Estonia, executed both through aggressive national defense financing and in close cooperation with international NATO allies, has brought the region to a stable point where the Russian military command cannot realistically risk taking such a dangerous step in Estonia. Emphasizing that Estonia has made significant financial investments in physical border security and digital surveillance, Roger noted that societal resilience remains exceptionally high, with recent data showing that 81 percent of Estonians firmly believe the country should offer immediate, armed resistance in the event of any foreign military attack.
