Hidden Tracks: Rail Baltica and the Suwałki Gap

By Terk Felix Kraft, 7 minutes

Have you ever heard of the Suwałki Gap? - Don’t worry, most haven’t. In short, the Suwałki Gap is the about 65 kilometre long border between Poland and Lithuania, demarcated by Belarus to its east and the Russian exclave Kaliningrad Oblast to its West. In wider terms, the Suwałki Gap is both a barrier and a corridor, a major impediment and an irreplaceable lifeline.

The Gap that is a bridge

From the perspective of Russia and its close ally, Belarus, the Polish and Lithuanian lands surrounding the town of Suwałki cut off Kaliningrad from Minsk and Moscow. This is important, as Kaliningrad is Russia’s only Northern European harbour that is ice-free all year around and, thus, hosts the headquarter of Russia’s Baltic Fleet. Further, Western analysts presume that Russia has stationed nuclear weapons in its exclave. In case of armed conflict in the region, assuring land access to Kaliningrad - thus bridging the Gap - would be a Russian priority.

 

Conversely, Russia taking over the Suwałki Gap would mean for NATO to lose land access to its most vulnerable allies, the three Baltic States. In case of a Russian attack on the area, NATO’s multinational Battle Groups stationed in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland would try to repel the initial aggression, while other NATO troops stationed in countries such as Germany or the Netherlands (commonly known as Spearhead) would come to their rescue within days. For that to happen, however, these troops must be able to enter the Baltic States. In other words: A cut-off Suwałki Gap would limit NATO’s supply lines into the Baltic States to the sea and air domains.

These reflections may seem abstract, yet they form the basis to NATO's regional deterrence strategy. Ultimately, the Suwałki Gap is a geopolitically sensitive strip of land that either joins the Baltic States to Central Europe and isolates Kaliningrad from Moscow or vice versa. Political geography renders a solution satisfactory to both sides impossible.

Let’s talk about trains

Trains are great. They are a comparatively quick and energy efficient way to transport big and heavy goods from A to B. Up until February 2022, trains have played but a marginal role in the most violent interstate conflicts of the 21st century. However, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine that same month has aptly demonstrated that rail remains the backbone of conventional warfare logistics, at least in Europe. In a way, Russia’s war against Ukraine has put railways - a technology of the 19th century back into the spotlight.

Different types of track gauges.

Much like in other former domains of the Russian Empire and/or the Soviet Union, railways in the Baltic States are mostly built in Russian Gauge (track gauge being the distance between the two rails of a railway), whereas most of Europe uses Standard Gauge. In general, trains built for Standard Gauge cannot run on Russian Gauge (and vice-versa). That is why, currently, NATO’s rail convoys from Central Europe supplying mentioned Battle Groups in the Baltic States come to a halt at Šeštokai transshipment yard, a mere 10 kilometres after crossing the Polish-Lithuanian border.

Here, in the middle of the Suwałki Gap, their freight is either loaded onto Russian Gauge trains or unloaded and subsequently transported by road. In other words, outdated rail infrastructure forces NATO to perform time-consuming and resource-intensive logistic procedures in the centre of its most vulnerable choke point. An insider I spoke to, who serves the German defence forces and prefers to remain anonymous, describes this status quo as “not exactly rosy”. After all, NATO’s regional deterrence strategy is based on credible defence capabilities and, as such, on the alliance’s perpetuous access to all its members.

Enter Rail Baltica

Rail Baltica is a new high-speed railway under construction that will run through the Suwałki Gap to connect Warsaw and the three Baltic capitals with each other. The EU-funded project was first envisioned in the 1990s and is scheduled to be completed by 2030. Crucially, this Rail Baltica is being built in Standard, not Russian Gauge, which will make it the only major railway of Standard Gauge in the Baltic States.

The new railway will not only serve as a fast and environmentally friendly high-speed public transport link between Poland and the Baltic States. Due to the heated regional security context, Rail Baltica intends to meet NATO-standards for military rail transport. To gain insight into Rail Baltica’s military potential, I spoke to German General J. Vollmer (retd.), former commander of NATO’s Allied Joint Forces Command in Brunssum, which lies about 20 kilometres north-east of Maastricht. The conversation was held in July 2023.

A Leopard 2A7 weighs up to 73 tons.

According to General Vollmer, Rail Baltica’s military-logistic capacities will support NATO’s deterrence endeavours vis-à-vis Belarus and Russia, for example by eliminating the aforementioned transshipment procedures at Šeštokai. He moreover anticipates that direct rail branches will be installed between Rail Baltica and the NATO Battle Groups’ bases in the Baltic States; “Anything else would be ludicrous!”. The four-star-General is convinced that a swift rail transport of heavy military goods, especially of Western tanks weighing up to 80 metric tons, will lend additional credibility to NATO’s regional deterrence.

After establishing Rail Baltica’s significant military benefit during peacetime, our conversation turns to the case of armed conflict. “Rail Baltica’s (military-logistic) capacity will play a central role in case of war. Everything within the framework of conventional warfare will be done to protect that (capacity).”, Vollmer is convinced and moves on to play through a range of possible scenarios of attack on Rail Baltica, from air strikes to sabotage. And, despite the evident vulnerabilities of any immobile infrastructure, he concludes: “As long as Russia does not entirely conquer the Suwałki Gap, it cannot permanently suspend the local railway lines.”

Tunnelling the NATO Lake

No doubt, Rail Baltica has the potential to significantly accelerate, fortify and streamline NATO’s logistic access to the Baltic States and, thus, contribute to allied deterrence and defence within the region. By that, however, the new railway adds to the already tense security situation around the Suwałki Gap. A security dilemma that today revolves around a strip of land will, in the future, culminate in a single railway.

Towards the end of our conversation, General Vollmer zooms out of the Suwałki Gap to paint a bigger picture of the entire Baltic region’s security situation. In light of Finland’s recent and Sweden’s projected NATO memberships, he foresees a Baltic Sea surrounded almost entirely by NATO allies, with the exception of Russia. Such a scenario would drastically alleviate NATO’s reliance on the Suwałki Gap for supplying the Baltic States, according to Vollmer. Instead, access could be partially assured through an envisioned tunnel connecting Finland and Estonia or - across sea and air - via the Swedish island of Gotland.

 

Résumé

A good three months after my conversation with the General, heavy damage was inflicted upon a gas pipeline and a telecommunications cable on the bed of the Baltic Sea, connecting Finland and Estonia. Days after, damage was found at an undersea telecommunications cable between Sweden and Estonia, almost as if to warn those who dare speak in favour of strengthening NATO’s abilities to support its three Baltic allies across the sea.

It seems like, for the foreseeable future, the lands between the Vistula Lagoon and Lake Peipus will remain contested - not on the ground, certainly, but as a pledge within the minds of regional stakeholders. In other words: The Suwałki Gap dilemma is here to stay. And as geopolitical dynamics continue to shift, Rail Baltica offers a glimpse into a future where strategic infrastructure and its destruction become synonymous with staking out security claims.

-To learn more about assured access and access denial strategies around the Suwałki Gap, read the article Access for Allies? by Martin Zapfe and Michael Carl Haas.

-To learn more about Rail Baltica high-speed rail, visit the project’s homepage.

-To learn more about the most recent events concerning the infrastructure damage on the bed of the Baltic Sea, take a look at this POLITICO article.