No, it cannot. I was talking about the strategic importance of the Suwalki Gap though. Russian aggression is not overblown whatsoever.
This is the Suwałki Gap, described as “most dangerous place in the world”.
This narrow strip of land, just 65 kilometres long, connects the Baltic states with Poland and thus also with the other NATO countries. To the west of it lies the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, to the east, Moscow-loyal Belarus. If Putin were to strike here, it would be relatively easy for him to cut the Baltic states off from their allies.
This is a little overblown.
The plan was never to try to dig in and hold the borders of the Baltics, that’s not feasible. They’re just too small, there isn’t enough depth. In any kind of large war, they would almost certainly be occupied, at least mostly. The question is, for how long, and how painful and resource-intensive would the process be for Russia? Once NATO mobilized, there would be a significant counterattack coming from the west. The Baltics wouldn’t be that much easier to hold for Russia, being in range of naval power and such a ridiculous number of NATO airbases.
That said, this is why a full scale attack is unlikely, at least at first. Putin knows a massive invasion, like what Ukraine faced, would bring almost all of Europe into a war with him in a completely unwinnable situation. Instead, it’s much more likely for him to try incremental escalations, testing Article 5 with small scale incursions and attacks, hoping he can drive wedges between the alliance members while leaning on nuclear saber rattling to deter a large retaliation. Ideally, NATO retains the ability to retaliate in kind to avoid escalation. While they don’t have as many undersea cables as we have, there are multiple other avenues for delivering smaller-scale retributions. Cyber, sabotage, diplomatic/legal, economic, etc.
Only place I’ve occasionally run into metric prefixes above km is in astronomy within proximity to our planet. You just don’t need them for most terrestrial applications, and as soon as you get out of the solar system people switch to parsecs and light years.
I suppose people also have a basic sense of how long a km is, where that goes out the window with anything bigger. Especially anyone who has gone through the military, has an intuitive feel for how distant a “klick” is.
Not much disturbs me quite as much as the far left aligning itself with Russia. The far left is mostly passionate idealists. How in the world do legitimate communists align themselves with Russia, which isn’t even remotely socialist? How do legitimate environmentalists align themselves with a major fossil fuel exporter? How did so many passionate idealists become convinced to abandon their most closely held ideals in favor of supporting a specific world power?
I could see the far left aligning itself with China, no issues there. They still have a lot of socialism, they are investing enormously into environmentally positive technologies. Russia offers neither of these though. Yet we see even Jill Stein, leader of our American Green Party, supporting Russian positions. How did they all get so compromised? Where is the idealism? Is Greta Thunburg going to start supporting Russia next, or is it (I hope) just the older, compromised generation?