Eagle Guardian: The War of 2010

So i found this old (and thus low quality) map of a NATO invasion of Russia and Belarus, circulated in Russian anti-Western sources in the early 2000s:

One Hundred and Ninety–Eight

Through central parts of Latvia, on the northern side of the Daugava River, what would become the most vicious fighting of the war was now taking place. The loss of life here would be immense and the destruction caused would leave this region of the Baltic nation in many ways afterwards resembling some of the infamous battlefields of previous world wars: the Somme, Monte Casino and Okinawa. This third global conflict would see costly fights yet nothing like this had yet to occur.

The Battle of the Daugava would see casualties in the (low) tens of thousands.

Russian Army reservists had been deployed here and they were supported by elements of the Twentieth Guards Army which had managed to escape from Lithuania. Those former conscripts recalled to service were equipped with old but reliable & lethal equipment. They had dug-in and were tasked to fight a generally static battle with those regulars meant to provide a mobile localised counterattack force. There wasn’t any real room for the reservists to manoeuvre: they were here and would die here. NATO had pulled the US XVIII Corps out of the battle-line and brought up the Allied I Corps. They aimed to fight a mobile battle and one fully supported by on-hand fire support aplenty. The intention was to batter their way through the defensive line which had so recently been strung across Latvia and then charge onwards towards Estonia. These two different concepts for how this battle was to be fought clashed just as the soldiers from many different armies did in this mid-September fight for control of the Baltic States.

NATO units forced their way through Russian defences. The Americans with their 4th Infantry Division near to Riga, the British & Canadians with the 3rd Mechanised Division in the area around Jēkabpils and the Germans & Czechs with the 1st Panzer Division on the far side of Daugavpils battered their way through those Russian defences. Their penetrations allowed for other units in support to then move through as well to start hitting the enemy positions from the flanks and even behind where possible. These fights took place in the countryside and also through towns and villages. Only NATO aircraft were in the sky – even Russian armed helicopters weren’t able to get near here as the skies belonged to NATO – but both sides filled the air with artillery shells and rockets. The Russians had a lot of big guns. They’d pulled howitzers and heavy mortars from warehouses just like they had done with tanks and other armoured vehicles. NATO counter-fire against that artillery, as well as firings done to support their own troops, helped make sure that the destruction was widespread. While aircraft above could drop some accurate and devasting bombs, it was all of those artillery which did most of the damage and caused so many casualties. Extensive minefields surrounded the Russian positions. NATO tried to blow some of these up ahead of going forward and the Russians too had command-detonated mines which they laid in surprise. Once more, there was explosion after explosion.

Tank cannons fired like those of artillery. NATO tanks moved forward and there was some mobile activity from Russian tanks though many of those in Russian service fired in-place. This made them easy prey for counterfire yet there were an awful lot of them. Coming out of all of those storage sites came Soviet-era tanks such as T-64s, -72s and -80s. These were un-modified vehicles without the latest additions in terms of equipment. Their cannons still worked though and those could fire shells and guided-missiles. NATO had plenty of tanks too. There were American M-1s, British Challengers, Leopards in service with the Canadians and the Germans and even some T-72s that the Czechs had. The Belgians brought some Leopards to the fight and so did the Dutch when they entered follow-up fights. Each side saw losses to their kings of the battlefield yet there were onboard explosions when infantry vehicles were hit as well in great numbers. Most of those had disgorged their human cargoes of infantry but were fulfilling fire support roles. Central Latvia would be afterwards littered with the smouldering remains of so many expensive tracked and wheeled armoured vehicles.

Among all of this firepower, there was the infantry fighting.

NATO sought to avoid major engagements with significant numbers of boots-on-the-ground but the fight which the Russians gave them saw I Corps units forced to undertake these. Russian riflemen and missile teams were everywhere and if they weren’t blasted out of those positions that they’d established, then they would have to be dug out. No advance could continue if this wasn’t down. Here the Russian Army was able to do what it had been unable to do since the very beginning of the war and inflict large casualties on NATO forces. They held their own. Counterattacks were made to retake ground that their opponents had just recently won from them. Only by bringing in significant firepower and overwhelming the defenders with numbers could NATO push onwards. These Russian riflemen were those who’d answered the call to defend the Rodina when so many others hadn’t. Their patriotism and morale might have been tempered significantly when faced with what they were exposed to on the battlefield but they fought onwards. They died in their thousands yet saw to it that NATO counterparts were taken with them.

Infantrymen involved in the close-up fighting but in addition all service personnel on & beyond the frontlines serving in the opposing armies were all prepared for the usage of chemical weapons. NBC suits were worn and vehicles sealed up. This made everything difficult and slowed things down but it was done. There were countless false alarms of gas though there were occasionally some real alerts too when it came to residual traces of the Marburg virus that had been transferred into Latvia by the movement of Russian forces through infected areas in their own country. When shelling, gunfire and accidents ripped holes in protective gear, soldiers panicked. Men complained about their level of protection too with this occurring everywhere among those with the latest gear and those outfitted with ancient equipment. No gas was used during the Battle of the Daugava. Other violations of the laws of war occurred though. Surrendered prisoners and enemy wounded were killed. There was the use of human shields – POWs and civilians caught in the middle of this fight – and the attacking of medical units. These actions would be denied by all parties afterwards when charges were levelled against their side though strongly asserted when it came to the ‘other guys’ doing this. Soldiers from many nationalities were involved in this but more than that, there was a lot of looking the other way too.


It had taken there days before the I Corps was able to force its way clear of where the furious fighting had taken place and move onwards. The Americans near to the sea got furthest out ahead and the Polish 16th Mechanised Division, then one of the Dutch brigades too (the Poles and Dutch both having been involved in liberating the Courland region), joined them in moving northwards. Naval shelling and friendly air cover which didn’t have to face air defences in depth helped with this. The Estonian-Latvian border was still some distance off but a breakthrough had been made. Elsewhere though, the rest of the I Corps was unable to follow them in pushing onwards. They’d won what it was becoming fast apparent was only the first fight. There were more of those Russian defences. Russia had sent more reservists to Latvia. They weren’t lambs to the slaughter because they came equipped for a fight which while one they would be sure to lose, they would still take part in. NATO aircraft bombed them from above yet the rest of the I Corps didn’t move forward to engage them.

Politics was at play now.

On their way to the Baltic as reinforcements for the fighting were three Army National Guard divisions from the United States, Romania was sending a division up from the Balkans and there was also the movement underway from Norway of US Marines & Royal Marines who had fought so land and hard there. This major addition of combat forces was something that Russia wouldn’t be able to match in terms of firepower even with all of their reinforcing reservists fielding what they had. Securing the transfer into the Baltics of these forces was a win for General’s Mattis and Petraeus but these came alongside reverses suffered away from the battlefield where several NATO countries refused permission for their troops in Latvia to continue taking part in the meat-grinder which was the advance. Belgium, Canada, Croatia, Germany and Spain all wouldn’t allow for that to happen. This stance was supported by others who didn’t have ground forces in Latvia in the form of France and Italy with those two nations standing by their allies in objecting to keep on losing so many lives like they were. The Americans, the British, the Dutch and the Poles had all taken great numbers of loses but there was a willingness to continue and go into Estonia. They wanted to get to Tallinn before the end of the month too: October and winter was coming. The others believed it needed to be done by other means rather than keep on doing what was being done.

There were wider matters at play that related to this internal NATO dispute that the news coming out of Latvia were only the spark to set off. First there had been the American bombing of Kiev and then the movement past Minsk further into Belarus. European NATO countries wanted to leave the rest of Belarus alone and turn all attention towards the Baltic. Before anyone knew wat was happening, two separate US Army battalion-level task forces crossed over into Russia proper during the ‘Smolensk raid’. They didn’t get to that city and turned back soon enough but this was an exclusively American matter. There was some limiting of anger afterwards at being deliberately left out of the loop on this when the US Air Force swept into Russian skies and blasted many Russian Army units out in the open following the raid as they came out from cover – which the Americans said had been their intention all along – yet there did remain a lot of bad feeling. From across the Atlantic, there was a lack of understanding on why the Europeans couldn’t ‘get in line’ and back them on what they were doing. Countries like Britain and Poland were playing a bridging role in all of this yet ended up catching flak from both sides of the dispute. This came at the same time as each of them had run up an extraordinary high number of casualties of their own, far more than their allies this side of the ocean.

Operation Baltic Arrow came to a temporary halt. There was still a lot of ‘reconnaissance in force’ as well as air and artillery activity ongoing but the advance was stalled. All those involved on the NATO side, those who wanted to stop and those who wanted to carry on, took the time to reorganise themselves and try to deal with the mass casualties. Russian soldiers kept on digging-in and made their own small-scale forward movements where possible to give their opponents no respite. Those reservists on the frontline had no idea what was going on elsewhere. This was the same with NATO forces in Latvia. The concept that the remaining course of the war, the fate of several nations, was going to be decided not here on this battlefield was currently inconceivable to them.

That was how it was going to be though. Some rather dramatic events and political upheavals were about to happen. A couple of Russian generals in the know waited ready for the deployment of chemical weapons as they had been instructed to be prepared for. They’d been waiting since the Battle of Daugava started and would continue to wait. Such weapons had yet to be used though. Why?

Good work James G.

Anybody got a link to where that highly accurate (sarcasm) map came from? I'd just love to read that Sputnik article.

I noted in three of the corners of the map there are info boxes with numbers. I can't read the Russian but I think I can make out what it is all about.
The box on the top left covers US nukes and ranges.
Top right is Russian weapons and numbers, bottom left is NATO weapons & numbers. I can't see what they are but NATO has way more.
It reminds me of something I once saw with Nazi era propaganda about Treaty of Versailles restrictions on Germany: how everyone has much more than poor little Germany. I'm still just speculating, but with the Russian comparison it will be portrayed in a way to make NATO look immensely powerful and Russia helpless in the face of it... forgetting Russia's tens of thousands of nukes.

Those on the inside, the inner circle, are plotting but events will be moving too fast for them: all of them already have blood on their hands too
Something big is about to happen.

Forcon shall deliver the answer on Monday!
I'll be looking at the ongoing conflicts in Libya and Syria tomorrow, but then with update #201 (two hundred and one - we've done loads!), answers shall be revealed.