The Morning Jolt, from Riga, Lativa, back on May 14:

If you compiled a list of the countries that are most likely to get invaded by a hostile force in the next five years, the good news for Latvians is that they wouldn’t be at the top of that list. But Latvia would still probably make the top ten list of those countries most at risk, alongside its Baltic neighbors Estonia and Lithuania. And a Latvian official who deals with national security issues speculated that perhaps a year or so after the Ukraine war “stops being a hot war,” Russia could regenerate its capabilities sufficiently to at least threaten an invasion of one or more of the Baltic states. This Latvian official also observed, “Russians can miscalculate,” and even if NATO’s forces were thoroughly prepared to repel a Russian invasion attempt, the decision-makers in Moscow may not realize it or may not want to believe it. After all, Russia initially believed it would complete its annexation of Ukraine within a matter of months. Deterrence doesn’t just require being prepared to fend off a threat; it requires the other guy to know and believe you’re prepared to fend off his threat.

If you compiled a list of the countries that are most likely to get invaded by a hostile force in the next five years, the good news for Latvians is that they wouldn’t be at the top of that list.

But Latvia would still probably make the top ten list of those countries most at risk, alongside its Baltic neighbors Estonia and Lithuania. And a Latvian official........

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