[Airborne Rifles]

The Russians have two reasons for caring about the Baltics:

1. The first is defensive. Think about this from the Russian perspective: 70 years ago a coalition of western/Central European states invaded Russia and killed 30 million Russians. Thirty years before that, a coalition of Central European states (German and Austria-Hungary) invaded Russia and killed a whole bunch of Russian. Sixty years before that, a coalition of Western European States and The Ottoman Empire invaded Crimea and killed a bunch of Russians. Forty years before that, a coalition of western/Central European states under Napoleon invaded Russia and killed a whole bunch of Russians. And on and on. They look at history with a great deal of mistrust towards the west. Add that to the fact that the Baltic states were actually part of Russia from 1721-1918, and part of the USSR from 1945-1991, and the fact that all the previous invasions of Russia had to start much further west, and you can start understand why they care about the Baltics.

2. The second reason is offensive: how can Russia destroy NATO today? Not by marching to the Rhine. The way Russia can destroy NATO is by invading a NATO country and then by nuclear brinksmanship or other means demonstrate that the alliance is unwilling to defend its members, which is the organizations entire reason for existence. If they can do that, they destroy NATO's legitimacy and the alliance could unravel.

As far as willingness to use nukes, the Russians have been very open about the fact that they are. They recently refused to renew a treaty that pledged that they would not use nukes first, and they've been open about threatening states like Denmark with nukes for accepting US missile tracking sites. They ar banking on the fact that NATO is NOT willing to go that far, and that this unwillingness would bring Europe and the US to the peace table in the event of a shooting war. It's scary stuff.