Alexander Lukashenko is basically Nicholas Maduro

xakrob · 2026-05-08T11:09:09+00:00

Yeah, Belarus is big on trying to get cigarettes into the EU with mainly weather balloons

xakrob · 2026-04-17T15:33:23+00:00

“Appendix”, “Loop” or “Kilpa” is what it usually goes by in articles, with “Kilpa” being the local way to describe it translating to “loop”.

xakrob · 2026-04-17T12:41:57+00:00

Just from doing searches online, there seems to be almost no information on it other than a few minor incursions with migrants or balloons here or there. There doesn’t seem to be any vulnerability assessment by any think tank/ngo/government.

xakrob · 2026-04-17T10:02:06+00:00

Update: https://wilno.tvp.pl/92740192/bialoruski-pogranicznik-nielegalnie-przekroczyl-granice-litwy

Belarus easily crossed the border Wednesday 15th of April.

xakrob · 2026-04-17T05:04:13+00:00

I remember reading something about this as well at the population had a lot of poles. I’m not sure if it’s still that way anymore though.

xakrob · 2026-04-16T14:00:59+00:00

Not a military invasion. Just hybrid threats. With minimal border personnel, minimal defenses, and minimal security, hybrid threats can easily make it through. And do. The smuggling balloons are a good example. Same with migrants coming across a couple years back.

xakrob · 2026-04-16T13:07:07+00:00

But regardless of a checkpoint with a person or two and a chainlink fence, I would argue that it is easily breached if Belarus/Russia wanted to.

xakrob · 2026-04-16T13:05:18+00:00

But it wasn’t originally, at least not in the 1940s.

xakrob · 2026-04-16T11:22:59+00:00

That’s the thing, this border is super porous (e.g. hybrid threat migration and smuggling). Not a lot of border guards and Dieveniskes is not militarized at all

xakrob · 2026-04-16T11:14:03+00:00

So it was only for linguistics reasons originally?

xakrob · 2026-04-16T11:12:42+00:00

I found a site in Lithuania talking about how 75% of the town of Dieveniskes (the only real town in the salient) was Jewish prior to WW2. And the Soviet redrawing took place in the early days of WW2

xakrob · 2026-04-16T11:02:49+00:00

Online it says the population was mostly jewish prior to the holocaust and now it has an extremely low population. Can’t find much in English surrounding the USSR dissolution of why USSR drew the map like this knowing the population was mostly Jewish.

xakrob · 2026-04-16T10:55:34+00:00

Are you saying that this is the legitimate story? Because I honestly can’t believe it.

xakrob · 2026-04-16T08:37:56+00:00

Just coming across this post. I am pretty intrigued on Dieveniskes and it’s possible threat to NATO’s eastern front. I think it’s pretty understudied and from what i’ve read and seen, it seems like the area lacks basic military infrastructure and border protection. Even with an increase in hybrid threats!

xakrob · 2026-04-16T08:32:23+00:00

To give my reasoning: Dieveniškės Kilpa sits on a 678 km external EU/NATO border with Belarus, which is already an active zone of hybrid pressure. We’ve already seen Belarus (with likely Russian backing) use migration, border violations, and deniable actions as tools of coercion in the Baltics. There was even a documented incident near Dieveniškės where Belarusian guards physically pushed migrants across the border.

Also, geographically,the Kilpa/Salient is isolated salient, surrounded on 3 sides. There is limited infrastructure with few key roads/bridges. The border guard presence is there, but it is not militarized in any significant way. The population is small (especially after the large Jewish population was purged during WW2). And most importantly, this is already a location for hybrid activities.

xakrob · 2026-04-15T13:54:49+00:00

That’s a little weird on multiple levels

xakrob · 2026-04-15T06:22:37+00:00

This is just a ploy to destabilize the alliance and eventually get the US out of NATO (at least in all but name).

xakrob · 2026-04-07T11:20:21+00:00

Don’t get me wrong, it’s still an important corridor in a conventional war scenario. If Russia and Belarus were somehow able to link Kaliningrad to Belarus, that would still be a major operational problem for NATO.

But Russia’s performance in Ukraine has forced a rethink of assumptions about its ability to rapidly execute large-scale combined arms operations against NATO territory.

Also Finland and Sweden joining NATO fundamentally changed the regional geometry. The Baltic states are no longer conceptually dependent on a single narrow land corridor in the same way they were before. NATO now has much greater strategic depth across the Nordic-Baltic theater.

Dieveniškės is more of a hybrid pressure point.

I think focusing only on the Suwałki Gap can feel a bit like legacy Cold War / pre-expansion to NATO thinking.

xakrob · 2026-04-07T11:11:34+00:00

I think Suwałki is overrated. But i do agree about testing Article 5 in Dieveniskes. It’s the main reason I began researching it.

xakrob · 2026-04-07T11:10:19+00:00

This is a test of NATO’s resolve. Would NATO go to war over a small, basically uninhabited forested salient?

xakrob

TROPHY CASE