Eagle Guardian: The War of 2010

...or someone in Moscow got them to do this.
It could have been a matter of plausible deniability via the manner of a warning using a proxy.

There will be a retaliatory strike for the use of chemicals by Belarus. The US no longer (nudge nudge, wink wink) has it's own biological or chemical weapons and there will be a lot of hesitancy to deploy tactical nukes with Russia's superiority there, but options are on the table and something dramatic will be done as an immediate response.

One of those comes out of the back of a MC-130 so you do need a minimal anti-air threat for whichever target to drop one on.

Oh my. Sunshine it is then...

The non-nuclear response will be delivered with a message to both Minsk & Moscow; "we didn't use nukes this time, but if you EVER do this again we will respond disproportionately and against targets with strategic value..."

One Hundred and Ninety–Two

A significant part of the Russian Twentieth Guards Army might have escaped over the Daugava and through into central Latvia yet a lot more didn’t manage the same feat. They’d ended up left behind for a variety of reasons – tasked a expendable rear-guards, caught in NATO air attacks and running into opposition on the way which they couldn’t get past – and thus in the way of the juggernaut of the NATO force which was the Allied I Corps. From the Baltic Sea to the Belorussian border, this mixed force from a variety of nations moved on to eliminate all those who had been left behind as well as finish off the liberation of Lithuania.

For any Russian or Belorussian in uniform left behind in Lithuania, they weren’t going to see their war end well.


Coming out of Kaliningrad, the left wing of the Allied I Corps moved through the west of Lithuania. The Croats, Dutch, the Poles and the men with the Franco-German Brigade which had recently arrived from Denmark engaged scattered enemy units all over the place. They fought against foreign occupiers in Lithuania who were already under attack from above and were also taking fire on the ground from both NATO special forces teams as well as Lithuanian partisans. The arrival of the heavy NATO ground forces put pay to any serious resistance from them. They couldn’t stop columns of tanks rolling past them and charging onwards while towards them came more armour, infantry and artillery in close support. Russian units posed a stronger threat to NATO units than the Belorussians did yet, in the end, the difference in nationalities didn’t matter once the full force of I Corps firepower could be brought to bear. Pockets of resistance were silenced. Men threw down their weapons and up their arms. Sometimes this was an easy process, other times it wasn’t. In a few exceptional circumstances some conditional surrenders were agreed to but in the main it was a matter of battering the enemy until they gave up with no conditions apart from the promise of good treatment for all and nothing more. At the same time as the trapped pockets of the enemy were silenced, NATO spearheads pushed onwards. They rolled up the Lithuanian coastline and also onwards towards Latvia as well. Huge areas of the small Baltic country which was Lithuania were liberated at once with somewhat ease whereas beforehand, getting here through Kaliningrad had been so tough. There were selective demolitions of infrastructure which a couple of groups of Russian special forces supporting engineers undertook though. The Spetsnaz tried to keep NATO troops back while their engineers blew things up which were certain to aid the onwards progress of Operation Baltic Arrow long after Lithuania was taken. Wrecking port facilities at Klaipeda was one of these missions. NATO had avoided bombing attacks here throughout the war due to Russian inability to use it for their purposes and a NATO desire to open it up once it was retaken. The Russians put an end to those designs. When all was lost, the engineering officers would surrender but the Spetsnaz tried to escape. They feared that they wouldn’t be receiving ‘good treatment’ and to have their rights as POWs respected. In many cases their escape efforts failed, bloodily it must be said with little quarter given to them on several occasions, yet some men did manage to elude capture through various ruses and sometimes just damn good luck.

Where Riga was located and the Daugava ran, the Twentieth Guards Army was behind them in central and eastern parts of Latvia. However, that left western Latvia, including the Courland Peninsula, open for NATO to liberate too like they were doing down in Lithuania. I Corps units closed up on the Lithuanian-Latvian border and started making entry. The Dutch were first in. Their 13th Mechanised Brigade, which had missed much of the war by remaining in Poland on security tasks along the Baltic coast (especially the Gulf of Gdansk area), had entered the fight for Kaliningrad late and then was sent to follow the A12 highway which ran north-south across Western Lithuania. They fought a battle against a Russian rear-guard unit at Eleja, a village which sat at a crossroads just inside Latvia, and then pushed onto the Latvian town of Jelgava. They were stopped here and involved in a bigger fight with the last of the Russian rear-guards and would need help to push onwards. However, this had them outside of Riga and also closing up access to Courland. In the coming days, from where the Dutch had secured, those occupiers left between Jelgava and the sea were all going to be eliminated soon enough as the areas of Latvia near to the Baltic would join those down in Lithuania in being freed as well.


Larger numbers of NATO forces with the I Corps had moved into eastern parts of Lithuania. The multiple heavy divisions – one American, one German and two British (each of the latter with significant Belgian and Canadian components) – had previously been battling the majority of the Twentieth Guards Army. Then the Russians did a runner, making use of night-time and also a lot of trickery to do so. Once aware, there was a chase on to go after them. Ultimately this failed yet it did lead to the American’s 4th Infantry and the British 1st Armoured Divisions getting up to the border with Latvia and then crossing over to where the Daugava was. Behind them, they left more Britons, Canadians, Czechs and Germans to finish off resistance in Lithuania. The capital Vilnius and the city of Kaunas were already in NATO hands but there were more Russians and Belorussians elsewhere. Many fights to took place to overcome them with NATO having all of the advantages in this. The Spanish too played a role where they not only took over behind-the-lines assistance but also secured the corps’ eastern flank. This ran along the Lithuanian-Belorussian border. Over on the other side where the US V Corps was fighting in Belarus, portions of that country far back from this frontier were in NATO hands yet those Belorussians who fought along the border and inside Lithuania aimed to deny NATO entry into their country via this route. Propaganda had been directed at them to tell them they were fighting for a lost cause – the V Corps had an area of occupation which included Grodno, Lida and Asmjany – but this was generally disbelieved. Few defections and little early surrenders came. The Spanish had a difficult time in finally wiping out resistance in this area. The British 3rd Mechanised Division (half its number containing Canadians) and then the German 1st Panzer Division (with a third of them being Czechs) following behind went in a northeastern direction. They sought to reach Latvia and make contact with NATO units in the Daugavpils area. The anticipation was that scattered enemy units would try to slow them down and some tough fights would come, especially from Belorussians guarding their border again. This wasn’t how it was. Only at the town of Utena which was a crossroads along the A6 highway was a delay inflicted and to silence that, the British used a couple of batteries of MLRS systems in targeted fire. It did the trick and a surrender came afterwards. Latvia was entered and the link-up made with those at Daugavpils sooner than expected: the Czechs and Germans turned towards the frontier with Belarus following this.

In the areas behind those significant advances, Lithuania was now nearly all freed. As was seen on the western side of the country, over in the eastern parts there was a re-establishment of sovereignty through a nation which had been previously occupied by hostile forces. Information from NATO sources as well as what information had come out during that occupation led to intelligence-led efforts to arrest collaborators and secure what vital parts of national infrastructure not destroyed. The Lithuanians which came in with NATO forces were few and relied heavily on the support of their coalition partners. A lot of their focus was too on aiding civilians in need. The occupation hadn’t been horrific though it hadn’t been kind on the people either. There were matters of food, clean water and medical help. Providing all of this fell on other countries yet at Lithuanian direction. It was hampered by all of the wartime damage done – including NATO bombing – but went on regardless. There was also the matter of the Lithuanian government who’d been caught inside the country when invaded. There’d been a doomed last stand in the Vilnius area for several days following the invasion. Surrender had eventually come and Russia got its hands on them. The president and other high-level figures had all been taken prisoner. Their fates had been something NATO intelligence efforts had been trying to determine throughout the war and with Vilnius back in friendly hands, there was more that could be done now. A joint Lithuanian-Polish team (though greatly aided by American technical support) when to the village of Antaviliai, located near to Vilnius. In the years 2004 to 2005, the CIA had established one of their ‘black sites’ here during the War on Terror. It had been closed and the Lithuanian’s own intelligence agency – the VSD – had moved in to make use of it as a training facility. When Vilnius fell, the Russians had first taken many VIP prisoners here. Those had included the country’s president and defence minister; the body of the prime minister, killed in an artillery strike, was also transferred there too. Dalia Grybauskaitė and Rasa Juknevičienė had afterwards been taken elsewhere though the corpse of Andrius Kubilius was present when the Lithuanian and Polish investigators arrived. The prime minister’s remains were to be treated to a proper funeral but the hunt was on for signs of what could have happened to the president and defence minister. Had they been killed and buried near here? Or was there any evidence they’d been removed to Russia? The Lithuanians wanted to know.


The US XVIII Corps had taken substantial losses in Latvia when the Twentieth Guards Army blew through the center of their defensive line leading to the Disaster on the Daugava. It wasn’t just the British TA with their 2nd Infantry Division but also a brigade of the US 7th Infantry Division and corps support assets too. The Russians had hit the weakest units in the middle of the blocking positions established along the Daugava to stop them crossing. It cost them a lot but NATO also had major casualties. Regardless, the line was reestablished afterwards. The rest of the 7th Infantry came in from the west and the British 6th Airmobile Division moved up from the east. The 2nd Infantry had no role in this and what was left of it was instead used to secure the flanks of the British and Belgian troops with the 6th Airmobile. The corps commander wanted to break up the 2nd Infantry afterwards. Only one of its three brigades could be considered combat capable and he wanted to add it to the 6th Airmobile: the two further brigades would be temporarily disestablished. That decision was taken out of his hands though and became a political matter.

General Mattis down in Krakow would be stuck with that headache.

The US Army’s 82nd Airborne Division missed the Russian penetration of the Daugava Line due to being tied up with Riga at the time. The distraction that others elsewhere had feared the Latvian capital would be for them, leading them to not focus on holding the river, had turned out to be true. They were right on its outskirts, taking it away from Russian paratroopers and militia units. Pulling them out was something considered but rejected: again this was a matter of outside politics interfering. Once the Daugava was declared blocked again and the Allied I Corps started arriving there after driving through Lithuania, orders came to the XVIII Corps to ‘finish the job’ with Riga. That they now did. Riga was entered properly. Several NATO warships had had a path cleared through the minefields in the Gulf of Riga and they supported from the water with shelling the final capture of the city. The victory won by the 82nd Airborne was partially delayed for a few hours when, in the middle of a Russian artillery barrage, several chemical alarms went off. This was only a few hours after the Belorussians had used nerve gas outside of Minsk. It turned out to be a false alarm but it gave a lot of people a fright. Even the men serving with the 76th Guards Air Assault Division reacted too it once seeing what the Americans were doing. They knew that they hadn’t used gas but didn’t know if someone else had given such weapons to the militia units fighting here. Once the gas alarms were silenced, and the threat confirmed to be nothing, the fighting went on. Riga was taken. Russian Airborne Troops staged a retreat afterwards, falling away to the north in a fighting withdrawal up the A1 highway. Most of those men were on foot though there were many armoured vehicles as well as some captured civilian transport. Being out on that road brought them away from the urban area where there had been civilians. An air attack was expected and NATO didn’t disappoint. Naval gunfire from offshore joined in as well. Plenty of bombs fell from aircraft above though it wasn’t the biggest of air strikes: Minsk was getting plenty of attention. The 76th Guards were left hurting but not destroyed.

Throughout central parts of Latvia and into the eastern parts, the Russians were now starting to establish their own defensive line. The Twentieth Guards Army redeployed. It faced contact on the ground from XVIII Corps units but this wasn’t enough to stop them from getting ready to hold a position that NATO would have to fight them out of should they want to liberate the rest of Latvia and then go on into Estonia as well. The I Corps was coming up to do that with their heavy forces.

Unlike Lithuania, Latvia wasn’t going to be abandoned by the Russians.

More of Minsk to come!