Chess grandmaster on Kremlin’s most wanted list after warning UK over ‘Putin invasion’

Russian chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov has ended up on Mad Vlad’s bad side as he has been placed been on the Kremlin’s international wanted list after issuing a warning over an alleged invasion plot

A Russian chess grandmaster has been put on the Kremlin’s international wanted list after he warned British troops face war in the Baltics over an alleged Putin invasion plot.

Garry Kasparov, one of the Kremlin’s most outspoken critics, now exiled, faces “politically-motivated” charges in absentia of “justifying terrorism”.

Kasparov, 63, has rattled Putin by also arguing that Mad Vlad has reached a “dead end” in his invasion of Ukraine.

But the grandmaster warned that the Russian dictator will seek a small “victory over NATO” in the Baltics to compensate for his humiliation in the four-year Ukrainian conflict.

He alleged that Putin will look to gain limited territory in Estonia and Latvia, both NATO members.

If Putin opts for Narva, in Estonia, Kasparov says this could lead to UK forces stationed in the country fighting to defend Estonia against the Russians with no time to wait for a NATO decision on collective defence, which would involve the agreement of US President Donald Trump.

“Putin is clearly at a dead end in Ukraine,” said Kasparov. “The front line has frozen, he can do practically nothing there, with mere gains and enormous losses. A dictator in his position needs some kind of success.

“Putin, like any dictator, understands that he can be forgiven for everything except losing the war.”

If the Kremlin despot is forced to halt his bloody campaign against Ukraine – in which he has lost almost 1.4 million Russian troops – “there can only be one success,” he said.

He will seek “to inspire people with the idea that we defeated NATO”.

This would involve a provocation or attempt to seize some, perhaps small, areas of NATO territory in the Baltics—this likelihood is growing every day”.

Kasparov pointed to two likely symbolic targets.

“Any success, however limited, is important. Capturing five square kilometres [2 square miles] of territory near Narva [Estonia] or Daugavpils [Latvia].”

These are “Russian-speaking cities close to the border”.

In the case of Narva, Kasparov said British troops could find themselves at war in quick time even without activation of NATO’s Article 5 which could trigger a Third World War.

He implied a secret agreement which would allow the British – with around 900 soldiers in Estonia – to fight outside the NATO umbrella.

“If we imagine for a second that the Russian army – or rather, even its limited contingents – cross the NATO border in the area of Narva [Estonia] or Daugavpils [Latvia], then someone will have to respond,” he said.

“Nobody is going to wait for orders from [NATO HQ in] Brussels, from an American general who would then call Washington.

“And so….we hear Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians openly saying that the Western contingents stationed there – for example the British contingent in Estonia and the Canadian brigade in Latvia – will respond according to the decisions of the local authorities [in Tallinn and Riga].

“In other words, the Estonians are clearly saying that the British brigade will fight alongside the Estonians without waiting to hear what Brussels says.

“I believe there are other agreements as well. We do not know everything.”

Meanwhile, Volya military Telegram channel has warned that “since mid-March, we have begun receiving confirmations from sources in the Russian Ministry of Defence and other structures that Vladimir Putin’s plans to invade the Baltic states have moved to the next stage.

The aim “is not to start a war with NATO, but to trigger a major crisis within the alliance by invading Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania and, ideally, bring about its effective fragmentation.”

Putin is secretly stockpiling hundreds of thousands of “unkillable” fibre-optic drones for a possible future assault on NATO, said the channel’s sources.

UK troops in Estonia are under Operation Cabrit, the UK contribution to NATO’s enhanced/forward land forces.

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