Baltic Thread About NATO 1/ So as Finland & Sweden join NATO, some are looking aft the land border but few are talking about the sea lane. A FAR worse problem for Russia. The Baltic Sea stops being a free passage to the Atlantic, and becomes a NATO lake without free passage

Baltic Thread About NATO 2/ Russia, the largest country by area, has 4 fleets. The Black Sea fleet we've seen sinking recently with Ukraine (yellow). There is their Pacific fleet (red). Their Arctic fleet from Murmansk (green). And their Baltic fleet, out of St Petersburg (blue)

Baltic Thread About NATO 3/ The Baltic fleet is headquartered at St Petersburg (some remember this city as Leningrad). It is the nearest sea port to the capital of Moscow, and St Peterburg is Russia's second largest city. And home port of their Baltic fleet

Baltic Thread About NATO 4/ Russia operates the world's largest fleet of submarines. And for their subs, the Baltic offers passage to the Atlantic, that bypasses US undersea sonars in the Atlantic Let me show current NATO waters on the Baltic Sea

Baltic Thread About NATO 5/ The red dotted line is territorial waters to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and then again from Poland, Germany to Denmark. If Russia stays outside those waters, it can sail pretty well undetected right up to the straights of Denmark.

Baltic Thread About NATO 6/ Look what happens when we add Finland (blue line) and Sweden (yellow line). The passage from Russia is too narrow to escape detection between Finland & Estonia, and the gap closes coming to the Danish straights between Poland & Sweden

Baltic Thread About NATO 7/ Russian warships, in particular submarines, could sail undetected by NATO, even if detected by Finland and/or Sweden, when crossing over to the mid-Atlantic. When Finland & Sweden join NATO, they will share all submarine detection with NATO. No hiding

Baltic Thread About NATO 8/ Much worse than the 'distance' added by Finland joining NATO to the border, is how if both Finland & Sweden join NATO, the Baltic sea becomes a 'NATO lake' where Russian ships including submarines could no longer hide

COMING ATTRACTIONS (Am not doing this yet, let's wait until Sweden officially also announces they want to join NATO) When Sweden joins NATO, it brings NATO world's deadliest submarines - only subs in wargames to sink US carriers. Silent Gotland class, with stirling engines...

Part 3 of the Mappy Trilogy to Finland joining NATO is now ready. I promise we won't do a fourth, and no, this will not be on the exam :-) Enjoy. The REAL pain of Putin's strategic blunder is.. this