The Baltic countries, which have long claimed that they could be the victims of a future invasion by Moscow, take the initiative by deciding to equip themselves with common "defense structures" along the borders with Russia and its ally Belarus.
This was announced by the Estonian Ministry of Defense, according to which Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia "will build anti-mobility defensive structures in the coming years to deter and, if necessary, defend against military threats".
The three states, republics of the USSR until its dissolution in 1991 after being annexed in 1940 following the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact between the Soviets and the Nazis, are among the most convinced supporters of the opinion that if it is not defeated in Ukraine, the President Vladimir Putin will also attack NATO countries.
Starting from these small states close to the borders of Russia and Belarus.
An accusation also leveled against Putin by American President Joe Biden as he tries to convince Congress to provide new aid to Kiev.
Last month, Putin himself defined these hypotheses as "nonsense", because Moscow "has no interest in fighting NATO".
Video Russia, oil depot on fire in the Bryansk region
Meanwhile, Ukraine continues to attack energy infrastructure on Russian territory with its drones, with bombings which, if not of the same scale as the Russian ones on its territory, nevertheless have an important symbolic value demonstrating the reaction capabilities of Kiev's forces.
A military intelligence source has claimed responsibility for a raid this morning on an oil depot in the Bryansk border region, where four large tanks caught fire.
The attack occurred in the locality of Klintsy.
The governor, Alexander Bogomaz, said that a Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicle, intercepted by Russian defenses, dropped the bombs it was carrying onto the depot before being destroyed.
Even more significant was the raid claimed yesterday by Kiev on another crude oil deposit in the St. Petersburg region, almost a thousand kilometers north of the border with Ukraine.
The claimed successes are not enough to quell the discontent over the flaws that the Kiev government denounces in the wall of Western sanctions against Russia, and which also concern the armaments used by Moscow's army.
"Up to 95% of critical foreign-made components found in Russian weapons destroyed in Ukraine come from Western countries," Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba denounced.
“The West must get serious about strangling Russia's ability to produce weapons,” the minister added, while admitting that supplies to Moscow are not the result of government actions but rather of private companies, and often these are products dual-use or civilian, and even household appliances.
Meanwhile, the controversy between Moscow and Paris continues over the episode of the alleged "French mercenaries" in the pay of Kiev who, according to Russian forces, were killed in a bombing of Kharkiv on 16 January.
France denied this, speaking of "a new gross Russian manipulation".
But Russia persists, and the Paris ambassador was summoned to the Foreign Ministry, which notified him of a protest over France's "growing involvement" in the conflict.
It was pointed out to the diplomat, the ministry underlined in a note, that "the death of his compatriots weighs on the conscience" of the Paris authorities.
The Russian Defense Ministry had said that "over 60 foreign mercenaries" had been killed in the raid on Kharkiv while 20 others had been injured, and claimed that many of them were French.
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