Baltic About to Boil - WWIII Alert!

From a confidential BIN source….

BALTIC ABOUT TO BOIL – One of our Agents has Intel that Russia will be poking a stick in the eye of NATO by the Baltic States shortly & since the Royal Navy is almost totally shut down and the USA military will probably not be sent…..the Baltic will soon be boiling. 
Good Afternoon,

My source in Finland tells me that the tensions in that area are ratcheting up a notch or twenty! I enclose a sample from the source. There is much more but I think this will show how tense matters now are in this area. I will add that we, the Brits, are in the worst possible state to fend off ANY aggression, leave alone from Russia. You will recall the newsfeed I recently sent advising that ALL our new much vaunted Type 45 destroyers are docked in Portsmouth for repairs, one source giving the cause as faults in their new engines!

The geography of the area concerned is such as to give the Russians the advantage of are denial by use of missiles, be they ground to ground, ship launched or air to ground. Our very scanty NATO air presence in the area, (Latvia/Estonia) will hardly be a deterrent. There is much more in the release from {name redacted} but I think I have depressed you enough already, so will close now. Use as you see fit, Very Best regards to you, yours, {name redacted}

The discussion regarding the potential of an armed conflict, or even regional war, between NATO and Russia over the Baltic have become a staple of the post-Crimean world. Most of the focus has been placed on the difficulty in reinforcing the Baltic states in the face of a Russian anti-access/area denial bubble (A2/AD) created with Kaliningrad as the centre of the bubble, and the potential of strengthening this bubble by rapidly occupying the Swedish island of Gotland. If this was to happen, the only way of reinforcing the Baltic states would be over the Polish-Lithuanian border, a strip of land which rapidly has become known as the Suwaki gap (named after the Polish town at one end of the gap ). The Suwaki gap in turn is claimed to be extremely vulnerable, as it is wedged in between the Kaliningrad enclave and the Belorussian border.

I will argue that this is, in certain aspects, an oversimplification, but that contrary to what one might expect, this does not lessen the risk of a confrontation. With regards to the A2/AD bubble set up in Kaliningrad, it is usually seen as blocking maritime and airborne forces. By using a combination of long-range high quality surface-to-air missiles and anti-shipping weapons (land based missiles as well as surface and subsurface units), Russia would be able to deny NATO forces entry into the southern parts of the Baltic Sea, and any units operating there would be under constant threat. These two features are a key part of the definition of A2/AD challenges. As NATO is lacking both numbers and key capabilities (such as mechanized and armored units) in the Baltic states, any NATO response to an incursion would have to include a rapid transfer of reinforcements from other NATO countries and into the Baltic states.