Last week, in an article titled "Vladimir Putin is testing the West — and its unity," the UK publication The Economist outlined Russia's "grey-zone" tactics against the West.

The author used the Estonian border town of Narva as an example of a future attack on NATO that could test the alliance's Article 5 collective defense clause.

"If Russia thinks it can get away with limited acts of aggression, something really dangerous might one day happen—such as Mr Putin grabbing a pocket of land around Narva on the Estonian side of the border, a city filled with Russian-speakers whose rights Russia pretends to champion," the article says.

Ambassador Sven Sakkov pushed back on the mention of Estonia in a letter to the magazine, which it published online.

My debut in the letters section. Grateful to ⁦@TheEconomist⁩ for publishing it. https://t.co/dbVApMW3GV pic.twitter.com/00sagvubO1

— sven sakkov (@sakkov) October 7, 2025

He said The Economist was right to draw attention to the issue, but wrong to use Narva as an example.

"Yet by rehearsing a scenario in which Russia "grabs a pocket" of land on the western bank of Narva, the piece risks doing precisely what it warns against: lending credibility to a narrative that reduces a quiet former Hanseatic League town and its residents to a hypothetical chess piece," he wrote.

The ambassador pointed out that Estonia has "agency" and can mobilize its 50,000-strong reserve force quickly. Record-high defense spending in recent years has led to investment in new long-range capabilities.

"Putting it simply, we will not allow a land-grab to take place," he continued, adding that NATO forces from the UK, France and the U.S. are stationed in Estonia. "Any deliberate incursion across the NATO border would therefore not be a local or bilateral event but an attack implicating the alliance as a whole."

Sakkov also said that Russia's war against Ukraine is not about territory, but "an assault on the very idea of Ukraine."

"Any similar aggression against a NATO member would not be about land. It would be an attempt to undermine NATO's credibility and the collective security that has preserved peace for its members since 1949," he said.

"Journalists and analysts should illuminate risks without inflating them into inevitabilities. Framing Narva primarily as a likely test-case for Russian expansion does a disservice both to readers and to the people of Narva. If the objective is to press NATO and European governments to buttress deterrence, that should be argued directly and soberly, not by turning a quiet working town and its citizens into a hypothetical trophy," Sakkov concluded.

"Very, very unlikely"

"Is Narva Next?" is a question that has been asked repeatedly by the international media and others since Russia's invasion of Crimea in 2015. The border town's close proximity to Russia and high population of Russians and Russian speakers has made for easy comparisons.

Estonian security expert Marek Kohv, the former head of analysis at the Government Office's National Security and Defense Coordination Bureau, does not believe Narva is Next, arguing in a recent article: "The short answer is 'no'."

When asked the question in an interview by Eesti Ekspress in August as part of a series of articles about how the war has changed Estonia, Commander of the Estonian Defense Forces Andrus Merilo said:

"Whether Narva is next depends solely and entirely on us, without any irony. If we show signs of weakness and uncertainty, if our knees shake and we join in the chorus that Russia really is so big and strong and winning in Ukraine, then we ourselves invite that evil upon us. But if we are prepared to defend our country, then we will defend Narva as well. In territorial terms, Estonia's national defense begins at the Narva River line. Narva is a strategic and ancestral Estonian city, this must be understood. But a Crimea-style scenario in Narva — I still consider that very, very unlikely today."

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