While the world focuses on the Straits of Hormuz and the blood-sodden fields of Zaporizhye, and conventional political wonks looked for tea leaves in Russia's fake election, people who follow Eastern European shenanigans are looking nervously at the border between Estonia and Russia.
Stephen Green notes that the signs along the Narva River are getting ominous:
Russia's internal security service has announced a curfew and restrictions along part of its border with NATO member Estonia.
— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) September 20, 2026
Civilians have been banned from leaving villages after dark, boating on the Narva River, and hunting within 5km of the border. pic.twitter.com/iInuthxsIG
"There are intelligence reports that Russia has been building hospital facilities" on the Estonia border, while "Russian border guards have been spotted shoring up the banks of the Narva River in exactly the way you would expect if you thought they were going to throw expedient military bridges across it."
"Russian border guards have also removed a set of buoys in the river marking the Russian-Estonian border, sparking a formal protest from the Estonian government," Eric added, literally muddying the waters between the two countries.
But here's where it gets truly disturbing: "The city of Narva, Estonia, sits at the Russian border, on the Narva river, opposite the zone where the Russians have declared a curfew for its inhabitants and a no-go zone for people who don't already live there."
Estonia has a sizeable Russian minority — and if you think this bit of history rhymes with "Sudetenland", you're thinking what I'm thinking.
I was about to write "one huge difference between Estonia today and Czechoslovakia in 1938 is that Estonia is a NATO member"...
https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2026/09/21/who-had-world-war-iii-starting-in-estonia-on-their-2026-bingo-card-n4957473
Russia's internal security service has announced a curfew and restrictions along part of its border with NATO member Estonia.
— OSINTtechnical (@Osinttechnical) September 20, 2026
Civilians have been banned from leaving villages after dark, boating on the Narva River, and hunting within 5km of the border. pic.twitter.com/iInuthxsIG
...until I remembered that the Czechs had powerful allies on France and Britain.
Neville Chamberlain proclaims "peace in our time" after allowing Nazi Germany to annex Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland, September 30, 1938. pic.twitter.com/iSGNo8g0FO
— Historic Vids (@historyinmemes) October 30, 2025
Will Europe - backed by the United States, of course — do better this time around?
Europeans — unbeknownst to most Americans — are certainly paying attention:
I can understand why countries like Poland, Estonia, Finland or Sweden are so worried about Russia (geographical proximity, troubled shared history, etc.) but Spain and Portugal are a surprise to me: pic.twitter.com/GjUgFJCqvn
— Wojciech Pawelczyk (@WojPawelczyk) September 8, 2026
So, history aside, how will NATO fare against an attack that appears intended to try to fracture NATO?
Intelligence mavens "joke", laughing grimly, that Poland would love nothing more than to attack Russia. I once heard a joke — or "joke" - that someone once asked a Polish soldier that if Germany and Russia invaded Poland again, who would he shoot first? He responded "The German. Business before pleasure". They have hundreds of years of unfinished business with the Russians.
Speaking of unfinished business, Estonia has been soberly eyeing its carnivorous neighbor for its entire free existence. This article from 2018 is a long, fascinating, deeply sobering read about a tiny country (a little over a million people) which has made the idea of fighting a guerrilla war against Russians a national pastime.
The moderately alert among you may ask "But wait - haven't the Russians been bled white in Ukraine?"
They have. Depending on the reports you believe, they may actually be running out of their once-massive stockpiles of tanks, personnel carriers, artillery, and volunteers.
But as Green notes:
But then I'm reminded of a quote attributed to Dwight Eisenhower: "If a problem cannot be solved, enlarge it."
Russia's recent "elections" have been seen as providing Putin political cover to order a "mobilization" - to start mass conscription to beef up the Army.
Those who've observed Ukraine might point out that throwing uniforms on civilians with a few weeks military training and throwing them into the front lines — which is what they've been doing in Ukraine recently — results in stacks of dead bodies, roads full of maimed young men, and roads full of charred tanks. And there's no reason to believe an attack against NATO — especially an Estonia that's got thousands of reservists hiding in the dense Estonian forests and a Polish army that is licking its chops and eager to avenge 1939, Katyn Wood, the betrayal of the Warsaw Uprising and four decades of Communism — will go much better.
But the one part of the Russian military that isn't nearly comatose from blood loss are their "Strategic Rocket Forces" - the nukes.
Forget about Estonians hunting down conscripts in the forest, or Polish "winged Hussars" in Leopard 2s sacking Smolensk. The question after the first round of conscripts gets mowed down will be "are you, NATO, willing to risk losing Warsaw to protect Talinn? Yes? How about Bremen, Lyon or Birmingham? Cleveland?"
Our media isn't likely to cover this until it's far too late.
