That’s the thesis of James Marson and Thomas Grove in their recent Wall Street Journal article.  It seems the US and allies have been running a number of training exercises in the Baltic Sea and in eastern Europe, and we’ve agreed to plus up (trivially) the number of soldiers we station in Poland—at Poland’s request.  This is making Russia nervous.

Mikhail Barabanov, of the Moscow-based Center for the Analysis of Systems and Technologies:

Russia sees the exercise as a preparation to deploy large NATO forces across the Baltic region[.]

Given Russian acquisitive aggressions in Georgia and Ukraine, its cyber attacks against each of the Baltic States, and its movement of tactical nuclear weapons close to its western border and into Kaliningrad, among other threatening moves, such a defensive redeployment seems only reasonable.

Now Moscow is complaining that such defensive moves and such training for defense is “destabilizing the region.”

This is nonsense.  It’s also dishonest.  It’s Russia projecting, assuming that because it has nefarious intentions, those preparing against those intentions must have their own.

Of course, if Russia has no aggressive intensions toward other nations, including those on its border, Russia has nothing about which to worry from those other nations—including those on its border.