• Baltic officials told German representatives they might send troops to Ukraine, Der Spiegel reported.

• The report says their condition for moving in troops is if Russia achieves a breakthrough in the war.

• The warning was part of an argument for Germany to up its support in Ukraine, the outlet reported.

Members of parliament for the Baltic states warned German officials last week that their governments were poised to send troops to Ukraine if Russia achieved considerable gains, Der Spiegel reported.

The German outlet reported Sunday that the Baltic officials issued the warning while speaking with representatives for Berlin at the Lennart Meri Conference in Tallinn, Estonia.

Der Spiegel neither named any of the officials nor identified which countries they represented but said they raised concerns about German Chancellor Olaf Scholz's current policy toward the war.

Scholz has been denying Ukraine permission to use German-supplied weapons in strikes on Russian soil, in line with Washington's stance of not allowing Kyiv to use donated weaponry for attacks beyond Ukraine's own borders.

Der Spiegel reported that the Baltic officials were concerned that such policies created a half-hearted attempt to help Kyiv and might allow Russia to gain the upper hand in Ukraine.

They said that if Moscow did gain significant ground in eastern Ukraine, their governments and Poland could move troops into the conflict zone even before Russia deployed its soldiers on their borders, the outlet reported.

The officials' argument, Der Spiegel reported, was that treating Moscow with restraint could backfire and instead create an escalation.

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Like Ukraine, the Baltic states — Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania — were previously part of the Soviet Union.

They've been some of NATO's most vocal members in pushing the rest of the alliance to intensify support for Kyiv, fearing that Russian President Vladimir Putin may seek to continue his conquest in the region if he seizes Ukraine.

Together with French President Emmanuel Macron, they've repeatedly hinted that they aren't ruling out sending NATO troops to Ukraine.

Officials in Estonia recently signaled the possibility of deploying its troops to fill non-combat roles and free up Ukrainians to fight on the front lines. There are concerns that such actions could escalate the conflict quickly into a direct war between NATO and Russia.

A spokesperson for Estonia's defense ministry told Business Insider the country wasn't discussing deploying troops to Ukraine for active combat roles.

"Tomorrow, the EU defense ministers will discuss the expansion of the EU training mission EUMAM, which until now has trained Ukrainian combatants on EU territory," the spokesperson said, referring to the European Union Military Assistance Mission in support of Ukraine. "The discussion will mostly focus on the quantity of personnel to be trained. However, it may also touch on the location of the training."

When contacted by BI, a spokesperson for Poland's ministry of national defense said: "We are not considering the idea of sending Polish soldiers to Ukraine, so it is difficult for us to comment on such media reports."

Press services for the defense ministries of Latvia and Lithuania didn't immediately respond to requests for comment sent by Business Insider outside regular business hours.

Why Russia's western neighbors are getting skittish

The concerns reported by Der Spiegel have come after Russia launched a renewed assault in northeastern Ukraine, striking the city of Kharkiv and capturing several settlements in the surrounding region.

Military observers say the Kremlin can't take Kharkiv with the resources it's deployed there so far, but Russia has been shelling the city and inflicting civilian casualties.

On the main front in the east, Ukraine has been struggling for months to hold back a grinding Russian advance after its supplies from the US began to dwindle.

The aid has resumed after months of stalling in Congress, but Kyiv says Western equipment often arrives too late to turn the tide of the war because conditions keep changing.

Russia meanwhile stoked alarm among its neighbors last week with a draft proposal from its defense ministry to change its maritime borders with Finland and Lithuania in January 2025.

The draft was uploaded to Russia's registry of laws on Tuesday but was later removed.

On Thursday, Tallinn officials said Moscow had removed 24 of 50 buoys marking Russia's borders with Estonia on the Narva River. The officials said Russia had been contesting the buoys' locations.

On Sunday, six NATO nations — Norway, Poland, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania — said they'd construct a unified "drone wall" with unmanned aerial vehicles and more advanced technologies to strengthen their borders.

Their concerns aren't just centered on a full-scale Russian invasion. Finland, for example, said Russia had been trying to overwhelm Finnish border officials with waves of migrants trying to enter its borders.

Norway, Finland, Estonia, and Latvia share land borders with mainland Russia, and Poland and Lithuania share land borders with Belarus, a close ally of the Kremlin.

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Ukrainian strike on Russian nuclear radar system causes alarm in West

A satellite image taken on May 23 showing damage to the radar station -

A Ukrainian drone strike on a Russian radar station that can track nuclear missiles has sparked alarm in the West.

Kyiv hit the Armavir radar station in the Krasnodar border region on May 23, damaging the state-of-the-art facility, which provides conventional air-defence as well as forming part of Moscow’s nuclear warning system.

Ukrainian officials confirmed on Saturday that their forces had carried out the strike, saying the facility monitors airspace over the country and occupied Crimea.

The radar station has reportedly been able to track long-range Atacms missiles, delivered by the US to Ukraine earlier this year.

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Mauro Gilli, a senior researcher at the Centre for Security Studies at ETH Zurich, said the drone strike had been a tactical success because it will force Russia to redeploy air defence systems and it also put down a marker that no Russian military site was untouchable.

“We can debate the effectiveness and merit but strategically there is logic,” he said.

Other Western analysts, though, were more hesitant and said that Ukraine should avoid striking Russia’s nuclear infrastructure.

“Not a wise decision on the part of Ukraine,” said Hans Kristensen, a nuclear arsenal expert at the Federation of American Scientists. “Bombers and military sites in general are different because they’re used to attack Ukraine.”

Thord Are Iversen, a Norwegian military analyst, said striking a part of Russia’s nuclear-warning system was “not a particularly good idea… especially in times of tension.”

“It’s in everyone’s best interest that Russia’s ballistic missile warning system works well,” he said.

One of Russia’s most modern radar systems, the Kremlin has deployed 10 Voronezh class installations along the Russian border. Each has a range of around 4,000 miles and can track 500 objects simultaneously.

Russia has yet to comment on the alleged attack, but it fits a pattern of intensified Ukrainian drone strikes this year on targets deep inside Russia, including oil refineries and transport hubs.

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The strike came shortly after Moscow began tactical nuclear missile exercises in its Southern Military District.

Olaf Scholz has pointedly refused to deliver Germany’s long-range Taurus missiles to Ukraine, saying he fears potential nuclear escalation.

The US has so far not relented to Ukrainian requests that it be allowed to use Western weapons in cross-border strikes.

Frustrated Ukrainian military commanders said they had to watch as Russia built up forces across the border in a de facto harbour area that they were not allowed to strike.

Since then, Russian forces have captured several villages and pounded Kharkiv with missiles fired from launch sites and warplanes inside Russia.

Britain has already given permission to Ukraine to use its missiles to strike Russia and now pressure is building on the White House to follow.

Antony Blinken, the US Secretary of State, is reportedly in favour of the change and this weekend Jens Stoltenberg, the Nato Secretary General, told the Economist that it was time to “lift some of the restrictions”.

Ukraine and its Nato allies still need to be cautious, said Fabian Hoffmann, a missile technology doctoral research fellow at the University of Oslo, because some US officials and some of Ukraine’s European allies will view the radar strike as reckless.

“I have some concerns about how politically wise this decision was, as it may have negative repercussions for Ukraine down the road in terms of targeting restrictions,” he said.

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