STANDING amid his neatly tended lawn in the “most dangerous place on Earth”, Valtemir Masharipov tells me what he would do if Russia invades.
The dad-of-11 revealed: “I would perhaps hide in the cellar, but that would be like burying yourself in a coffin if a bombardment came.”
Today, it’s difficult to imagine Russian tanks rolling into his tranquil and remote farming village of Salaperaugis — population 70 — situated on a sun-soaked Lithuanian hillside.
Yet Valtemir, 54, and his family live smack bang on the Suwalki Gap, a quirk of geography and history that analysts cite as the most likely tinderbox to spark World War Three.
A 40-mile plateau of rolling fields, pristine lakes and birch forest straddling Lithuania’s border with Poland, it also divides the Russian territory of Kaliningrad from ally Belarus.
If Russia seized the Suwalki Gap, it would disastrously cut Nato’s Baltic members Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia from the rest of the military bloc.
It’s why US General Ben Hodges described the gap as “one of the most volatile points on the world map”, while a headline writer on one political news site simply called it “the most dangerous place on Earth”.
Farm labourer Valtemir added: “Every morning on the news I hear about the Suwalki Gap. I fear for the future of my five-year-old boy.”
He then points across the sparsely-populated landscape towards Russian territory and insists: “The danger comes from that direction.”
Sun photographer Darren Fletcher and I drive through potato and buckwheat fields towards Kaliningrad — home to Russia’s Baltic fleet and bristling with an estimated 100 nuclear warheads.
Once part of German East Prussia, it was seized as war booty by the avenging Red Army in 1945 after its capital Konigsberg was turned to rubble by the RAF.
In 2018, England fans flocked to this Russian exclave — surrounded on three sides by the EU — to watch the Three Lions lose 1-0 to Belgium in the World Cup.
Today, it marks the border between the Nato alliance and Russia.
At a crumbling Soviet-era apartment block that hugs the border in the small Lithuanian town of Kybartai, unemployed Jurgita Maurucaite, 43, is collecting kindling for her fire.
Peering through the border fence at a Russian flag fluttering 300ft away, she said: “I wouldn’t know which way to run if there was an incursion.
“I’m worried, but what can I do? If the tanks come, I will pray.”
Another resident, Giedre Brozotsko, 38, points at the razor wire towards Kaliningrad and said: “When I was a child, there were no fences.
“I would jump over a small stream and talk to the Russian guards. They were friendly.”
As we talk, Russians in military fatigues emerge from two trucks parked on the other side of the wire.
Mum-of-two Giedre added: “My daughter was given a talk at school about what would happen if the Russians invaded.
“We would flee to Poland or, in the worst-case scenario, get a boat out into the Baltic Sea.”
Sitting outside his apartment in the autumn sunshine, retired farm labourer Gintas Brizinskas, 74, told me: “I’m old — there’s not much I can do if Russia seizes the Suwalki Gap.
“But I’m worried about the younger generation.”
Asked his opinion of Putin, Gintas responded: “F*** him.”
Shortly afterwards, a news alert on my phone reveals that the Russian Embassy in London has threatened nuclear war should “British or Nato military” order a “blockade or strike on Kaliningrad”.
The Russians are jumpy because their 11th Army Corps that once guarded the exclave suffered heavy losses fighting in Ukraine.
Its air defences in Kaliningrad are also said to be vulnerable.
Last month, Poland’s foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski suggested deploying troops around the exclave to force Putin to pull units from Ukraine to defend it.
One defence analyst described Kaliningrad as “the Achilles’ heel of the Russian Federation”.
It has led to Cold War levels of paranoia in this febrile borderland.
At the Panemune border crossing further north, a Lithuanian guard escorted Darren and I on to a river bridge in no-man’s-land between Russia and the EU nation.
With an eerie feel reminiscent of Berlin’s Checkpoint Charlie during the Soviet era, a Russian flag flutters in the breeze on the other side of the Nemunas river, and Putin’s battle insignia Z is painted on a building.
On the Lithuania side, two-tonne dragon teeth concrete blocks protect from tank invasion while a giant Ukrainian flag flutters beside a Lithuanian one from a pylon.
At his modest home a few yards from the border post, retired carpenter and navy veteran Zenius Bajorinas, 66, insisted: “I’m not worried by the sabre-rattling or threats. I’ve got friends on the other side of the river in Kaliningrad and used to cross every day before the Ukraine War.”
Local mayor Vaidas Bendaravicius, 56, explains that for the last couple of years, people in the area have been experiencing disruption to their satellite-based navigation systems.
The 56-year-old revealed: “I’ve been driving and the GPS has falsely placed me in Russian territory.
“It really affects our farmers, who use GPS on their tractors.”
As we sit in his office in Pagegiai, a shrill alarm sounds on our phones.
It’s a test for Lithuania’s public warning system, and a message flashes up on my phone urging me to “stay calm” and tune into national TV for more information.
Lithuania has also been holding military drills and rehearsing wartime evacuation plans this week.
Later, we crossed Lithuania to visit the Belarus border on the other side of the Suwalki Gap.
In thick pine forest, tank traps and 15ft-high razor wire guard the now closed Jurgio Kybarto border crossing around an hour east from the Lithuanian capital Vilnius.
The only sounds are the caw of ravens and the thump of techno music drifting from a village on the Belarusian side of the wire.
So are Russia and their close Belarusian allies about to unleash armoured columns to take the Suwalki Gap and place Nato in a stranglehold?
At Lithuania’s National Library in Vilnius, I met Giedrimas Jeglinskas, the country’s Defence Committee Chairman until he stepped down as an MP this year.
He insists Lithuanian investment in the gap — including roads, railways and military training facilities — has turned the Suwalki Corridor into a “strong point rather than a weak point”.
Jeglinskas, 47, also a former Assistant Secretary General at Nato, said: “The way we approach our security and defence comes from our experiences in the past.
“We had 50 years of (Soviet and Nazi) occupation. Before that, we had hundreds of years of struggle with Russians and other enemies.
“So, it’s the survival of a nation that’s at stake.”
Jeglinskas believes the likelihood of a conventional attack by the Russians is “very low”, but insists Lithuania would fight back.
He added: “Ukraine has demonstrated to all of us that it’s not just the size of a country that matters. It’s also the heart, it’s the resilience of the people, it’s preparedness.”
The security expert points out that Lithuania has allocated almost €5billion on defence this year — 5.38 per cent of its GDP, dwarfing the UK spend of just 2.6 per cent.
Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/17096800/lithuania-tinderbox-trigger-world-war-three/
