Baltic officials said they could send troops to Ukraine without waiting for NATO if Russia scores a breakthrough: report

• MPs for the Baltic States have been warning German officials that they might send troops to Ukraine.
• Their condition would be if Russia achieves a breakthrough in Ukraine, Der Spiegel reported.
• They issued the warning as part of an argument for Germany to support Ukraine more aggressively, per the outlet.

Members of parliament for the Baltic States warned German officials last week that their governments are poised to send troops to Ukraine if Russia achieves considerable gains, Der Spiegel reported.

The German outlet reported on Sunday that the Baltic officials issued the warning while speaking with representatives for Berlin at the Lennart Meri Conference in Tallinn.

Der Spiegel neither named any of the officials nor identified which countries they represented, but reported that they raised concerns about Chancellor Olaf Scholz's current policy toward the war.

Scholz has been denying Ukraine permission to use German-supplied weapons in strikes on Russian soil, in line with Washington's stance of not allowing Kyiv to use donated weaponry for attacks beyond Ukraine's own borders.

According to Der Spiegel, the Baltic officials were concerned that such policies created a half-hearted attempt to help Kyiv and might allow Russia to gain the upper hand in Ukraine.

They said that if Moscow does gain significant ground in eastern Ukraine, their governments and Poland could move troops into the conflict zone even before Russia deploys its soldiers on their borders.

The argument from the officials, according to Der Spiegel, was that treating Moscow with restraint could backfire and instead create an escalation.

Like Ukraine, the Baltic States — Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania — were previously part of the Soviet Union.

They've been some of NATO's most vocal members in pushing the rest of the alliance to intensify support for Kyiv, fearing that Russian leader Vladimir Putin may seek to continue his conquest in the region if he seizes Ukraine.

Together with France's President Emmanuel Macron, they've repeatedly hinted that they aren't ruling out sending NATO troops to Ukraine.

Officials in Estonia, in particular, recently signaled the possibility of deploying its troops to fill non-combat roles and free up Ukrainians to fight on the front lines. There are concerns that such actions could escalate the conflict quickly into a direct war between NATO and Russia.

Press services for the defense ministries of Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania did not immediately respond to requests for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.

Why Russia's western neighbors are getting skittish

The concerns reported by Der Spiegel come as Russia launched a renewed assault in northeastern Ukraine, striking the city of Kharkiv and capturing several settlements in the surrounding region.

Military observers say the Kremlin can't take Kharkiv with the resources it's deployed there so far, but Russia has been shelling the city and inflicting civilian casualties.

On the main front in the east, Ukraine has been struggling for months to hold back a grinding Russian advance after its supplies from the US began to dwindle.

The aid has resumed after months of stalling in Congress, but Kyiv says Western equipment often arrives too late to turn the tide of the war because conditions keep changing.

Meanwhile, Russia stoked alarm among its neighbors last week with a new defense ministry draft proposing changing its maritime borders with Finland and Lithuania in January 2025.

The draft was uploaded to Russia's Registry of Laws website on Tuesday but was later removed.

On Thursday, Tallinn officials said Moscow had removed 24 of 50 buoys marking Russia's borders with Estonia on the Narva River. The officials said Russia has been contesting the buoys' locations.

On Sunday, six NATO nations — Norway, Poland, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania — said they would construct a unified "drone wall" with unmanned aerial vehicles and more advanced technologies to strengthen their borders.

Their concerns aren't just centered on a full-scale Russian invasion. Finland, for example, said Russia has been trying to overwhelm Finnish border officials with waves of migrants trying to enter its borders.

Norway, Finland, Estonia, and Latvia share land borders with mainland Russia, while Poland and Lithuania share land borders with Belarus, a close ally of the Kremlin.

May 27, 2024: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Poland was once part of the Soviet Union.