The population of Latvia has an even greater percentage of ethnic Russians than Estonia does. Although Kato's mentioned Russia's contracting population a couple of times here and elsewhere, I hadn't thought about it being an incentive for territorial expansion. Thanks for that, Web. If Russia takes parts of Estonia and Latvia, not only do they gain territory (buffer space), they also gain Russian people.
Thanks also for the points about how the Russian AD network spans borders. Although I've thought a lot about ways that a Russian invasion of Estonia could widen into a wider war between Russia et al (namely, Belarus) and NATO, I hadn't really thought about how the nebulous overlap of ground-based AA networks might contribute to escalation. I'd kind of touched on it with the issue of over-flight rights, but the fact that Russian SAM based on Russian soil would likely need to be dealt with to protect NATO aircraft operating over eastern Estonia. Hitting Russian forces in Estonia is one thing, hitting them on Russian soil is another.
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