Infrastructure is never politically neutral
NATO's costly race to undo Russia's imperial engineering with Rail Baltica
Rail Baltica is a transportation project that aims to do something basic yet crucial: build a railway connecting Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania to Poland and the rest of Europe. This seemingly mundane project has recently transformed into a geopolitical battleground - all because of one technical detail: the Soviet-era railways in the Baltic states are built with tracks that are 85mm wider than European standard gauge. This makes direct connections to Western Europe impossible without changing trains at the border.
This gauge difference represents a calculated military feature implemented by the Russian Empire and maintained throughout Soviet occupation. The wider tracks ensured Western European trains couldn't penetrate Russian territory during conflicts, creating a defensive barrier at the border. Today, this legacy system creates significant logistical hurdles for NATO forces in moving troops and equipment into the Baltics during potential crises, in contrast to Russian military trains that can roll directly in on compatible tracks.
As the €27 billion Rail Baltica project struggles with ballooning costs and expanding timelines, it has evolved from a commercial transportation initiative into perhaps the most significant strategic infrastructure investment in the region since the Cold War. The fundamental question looms ever larger: will the completion of this railway occur before geopolitical realities make it irrelevant or, more troublingly, impossible?
Infrastructure as a control doctrine
Moscow has consistently viewed railways as critical military infrastructure. Following Crimea's annexation in 2014, constructing a rail bridge connecting the peninsula to mainland Russia became one of Putin's top priorities. In the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Russian forces used compatible rail gauges. This helped them move troops and supplies quickly. Of course this isn't coincidental - it's doctrine.
The Zapad and Vostok military exercises consistently include railway components, with Russian forces practicing deployment along rail lines in a short time frame. This is particularly dangerous for the Baltics, as their Soviet-era tracks could serve as ready-made invasion routes. Unlike Europe's roads, which can be blocked by destroyed bridges and obstacles, railways provide reliable, high-capacity routes. These corridors are hard to deny to an advancing force.
Russia's recently expanded military bases near the Baltic borders aren't just symbolic. They're positioned to leverage existing rail infrastructure for rapid mobilisation. The strategy is clear: in a conflict, Russian forces might reach Baltic capitals before NATO can send reinforcements through the tricky gauge transfer at the Polish border.
The terminal risk of half-measures
The Baltic states have created a perfect metaphor for the region's strategic confusion by building train stations without securing the actual railway network first. To travel from Tallinn, Estonia, to Riga, Latvia, a passenger must take a train to Valga. It's just 280 km apart. Then, they wait for hours before catching another train to Riga. A journey that is expected to take three hours stretches to nearly eight.
Rail Baltica's official cost estimates have undergone the kind of explosive growth that typically signals a project in crisis. From €5.8 billion in 2017 to €24-27 billion today, this fourfold increase would be alarming for any infrastructure project. For small economies like the Baltics, the impact could be catastrophic.
This explains the retreat from original ambitions, which has grown more desperate. The €15 billion first phase - now targeting 2030 completion rather than 2025 - will deliver only a single track instead of the planned double track. The second phase has no committed timeline whatsoever and is still “contingent on future funding.”
The EU has committed to funding 85% of the current costs so far - roughly €4.5 billion - but the multi-billion funding gap for even the scaled-back first phase remains unfilled. With the EU's next financial period beginning in 2028, the project faces significant uncertainty. As Estonia's national auditor Janar Holm admits with frankness, “several more years of delays are likely.”
The security imperative vs. fiscal reality
The strategic mathematics is straightforward: NATO has about 10,000 troops in the Baltics. In a conflict, this number could rise to 500,000. The logistical challenge of moving such forces through the region with the current infrastructure would be staggering.
Rail Baltica plans to swap a four-mile military convoy for one 40-wagon train. This change could help evacuate up to 143,000 civilians daily from Baltic capitals if needed. These are not just convenience upgrades; they are crucial for survival. This is especially true in a region where Russia has military bases close to the EU border.
Yet strategic imperatives don't automatically generate funding. The Baltics remain caught between the financial constraints of small economies and the existential threat of proximity to an aggressive neighbour. This tension explains the search for alternative funding models that has grown more desperate.
Kaliningrad is Russia's railway chokepoint.
No discussion of Baltic railway vulnerabilities would be complete without addressing Kaliningrad - Russia's heavily militarised exclave wedged between Poland and Lithuania. This outpost presents a challenge to Rail Baltica that is particularly dangerous.
Kaliningrad is Russia's only ice-free port in the Baltic Sea. This gives it a key role in Moscow's naval operations in the region. The exclave hosts significant naval assets, including vessels armed with Kalibr cruise missiles capable of striking targets throughout the Baltics and much of Europe.
As the Rail Baltica line will eventually pass through Lithuania just 50-70km from the Kaliningrad border, it becomes vulnerable to a range of disruption tactics below the threshold of open warfare - from physical sabotage to electronic warfare against signalling systems.
The Suwałki Gap - the narrow 65km corridor between Kaliningrad and Belarus that represents NATO's only land connection to the Baltic states - intersects directly with Rail Baltica's planned route. This creates a perfect storm of vulnerability: the railway must traverse precisely the geographic chokepoint most likely to be contested in any conflict scenario.
The Baltic energy grid as Russia's next front
While most analysis focuses on Rail Baltica in isolation, the railway project represents just one dimension of a broader Baltic challenge: fully decoupling critical infrastructure from Russian control systems. The parallels with the region's power grid are impossible to ignore and highlight the synchronised nature of Russia's infrastructure-based leverage.
In February, the Baltic states disconnected from the Russian electricity grid and synchronised with the European network - a process directly analogous to Rail Baltica's gauge conversion. This isn't coincidental timing; it's a strategic recalibration across multiple domains.
For the electrical grid, Russia could conduct destabilising tests or “accidents” that cause frequency fluctuations, potentially damaging Baltic infrastructure or creating blackouts. For Rail Baltica, Russian electronic warfare systems could interfere with signalling and communications systems, causing disruptions or safety hazards without crossing into open aggression. These parallel infrastructure projects reveal Moscow's multi-layered approach to regional dominance. While military analysts focus on traditional threats, Russia's most effective coercion often comes through infrastructure dependencies that fall below the threshold of NATO's Article 5.
The project's sprawling supply chains, multinational contractor networks, and complex digital systems create innumerable attack surfaces. Russian intelligence services have already been implicated in attempts to compromise contractors working on NATO security infrastructure in the Baltics (some examples here).
The calculus from Moscow's perspective is straightforward: derailing Rail Baltica - whether literally or figuratively - offers high strategic returns at minimal cost. Targeted actions that cause delays, budget overruns, or safety concerns could undermine political will without ever approaching the threshold of open conflict.
Russia's strategic patience
Russia's most effective weapon against Rail Baltica might simply be time. Moscow recognises that protracted delays serve its strategic interests without requiring direct intervention. Each year the project falls behind schedule, costs increase, political resolve wavers, and NATO's eastern flank remains vulnerable.
The financial mathematics work distinctly in Russia's favour. As inflation erodes budgets and construction costs rise, the €10 billion funding gap for Rail Baltica's first phase will likely widen further. Baltic states with limited fiscal capacity face increasingly painful trade-offs between this strategic project and domestic priorities. Meanwhile, the EU's ability to maintain its 85% funding commitment faces mounting pressure from competing crises.
Russian strategists almost certainly recognise that Rail Baltica faces a critical window of feasibility. If the project cannot demonstrate substantial progress before the EU's next financial period begins in 2028, securing the necessary additional funding becomes significantly more uncertain. This creates a perverse incentive structure where Russia benefits from any delays that push the timeline beyond this critical threshold.
With rising tensions across multiple fronts, Russia calculates that Western attention and resources will eventually be stretched too thin to sustain ambitious infrastructure projects in the Baltics. This explains Moscow's dual-track approach: occasional pinprick provocations to remind the Baltics of their vulnerability, combined with patient observation of the project's internal challenges.
The measurement of independence
The irony is striking: the difference between dependence and sovereignty can be measured in millimetres. Those 85mm represent not just a technical specification but a civilisational choice - the physical manifestation of the Baltics' rejection of Russian hegemony.
As construction continues amid ballooning costs and stretched timelines, the project embodies the central dilemma facing all post-Soviet states: how to escape geography when history keeps reasserting itself. Rail Baltica's ultimate success will be measured not just in kilometres of track laid or billions of euros spent, but in whether it delivers the strategic autonomy its proponents promise.
The Baltic states understand what many Western European countries have only recently begun to grasp - that infrastructure is never politically neutral. The gauge of a railway track represents a strategic orientation that shapes a nation's future far beyond its immediate economic impact.
The choices made in the coming years will determine whether Rail Baltica becomes the iron backbone of Baltic independence or joins the list of unfulfilled post-Soviet dreams. The Baltics are betting their security that steel rails can accomplish what political declarations alone cannot: anchoring their nations firmly within the European space, 1,435mm at a time.
Meanwhile, Moscow waits. Patient, calculating, and increasingly confident that time works in its favour.