Nato & Russia: Border Tensions
KATARZYNA PLEJNIS TRIES hard not to think of the missile launchers, tanks and thousands of Russian soldiers stationed just a few miles from her house in northern Poland. That is until the live fire exercises wake her up in the dead of night.
“You can hear the shooting at four in the morning,” says Ms Plejnis, who lives in Braniewo, a small town a few miles from the border with Kaliningrad, the heavily militarised Russian enclave squeezed between Poland and the Baltic states.
.. So far this year, more than 20,000 Nato troops have taken part in exercises in the region and 30,000 more have been put on standby, in what Jens Stoltenberg, Nato’s secretary-general, has described as “the biggest adaptation of force structures since the end of the cold war”.
.. According to the Public Opinion Foundation (FOM), a pollster whose main client is the Russian government, more than half of all Russians now see war with Nato as a real threat.
.. “Fear about external threats has replaced economic concerns as the main driver of public sentiment,” says Mikhail Dmitriev, an economist and sociologist in Moscow. Pollsters say this has helped Mr Putin maintain popularity ratings at a historical high level of more than 80 per cent despite an economic slump ..
.. He accuses Nato of warmongering, citing the decision last year, to create a Joint Expeditionary Force Agreement. “They have also increased fighter jet flights close to our borders. That is in violation of everything Nato promised Russia,” he says.
.. “If only there was no war,” says Nadezhda, an elderly woman using a popular phrase that embodies ordinary Russians’ fear of conflict.