By Dr Azeem Ibrahim OBE

On the 15th of September, a drone believed to be carrying explosives was shot down over Lithuanian airspace near Kaunas.

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Around the same time, a Russian frigate fired flares at a Danish helicopter, and Poland put its air force on alert. Baltic intelligence chiefs have since gone public with a blunter warning: Moscow is preparing for more decisive action in Europe.

Britain tends to think about the Russian threat in military terms - submarines in the North Atlantic, missiles pointed towards Europe, tanks massed on NATO's eastern frontier. But Vladimir Putin does not need to start a conventional war to damage Britain and its allies. Increasingly, Russia is operating in the space between peace and war, interfering with the infrastructure modern European societies depend on while avoiding the obvious act of aggression that would demand a NATO military response.

To understand where this could lead, Britain should pay much more attention to Kaliningrad.

Kaliningrad is a heavily militarised Russian territory on the Baltic Sea, separated from mainland Russia and surrounded on land by NATO members Poland and Lithuania. It hosts Russia's Baltic Fleet, missiles, air defences and powerful electronic warfare capabilities.

For decades, Western planners worried about what Russia might fire from Kaliningrad. The more urgent question today is what Russia is learning there, and this month's incidents suggest that testing is accelerating.

The clearest example........

© LBC