What next for Vladimir Putin? Or, maybe, where next?

Bogged down in the Donbas, humiliated by Ukraine’s cross-border incursion into the Kursk region, the Russian strongman faces the clearest threat to his authority since last year’s abortive Wagner revolt.

And with his back against the wall, Putin is at his most dangerous, according to critics who describe his “street thug” mentality. The fear is that the Moscow bully could double down on his Ukraine gamble by making war on another front, taking on NATO in the Baltic states.

Signs that Putin no longer has any limits have been have been building for some time. A direct cruise missile attack on Kyiv’s main children’s last month, on the eve of a NATO summit in Washington, D.C., was seen as a message from the Kremlin that this is not just about Ukraine, that Russia is ready for bigger battles, even for World War III.

In Russia itself at least, the message got through. The strong words and decisive resolutions from NATO leaders in D.C. were met with mockery, ugly jokes about the increasingly tiny part left of war-ravished Ukraine that would eventually become a NATO member, and apparently serious calls from the Kremlin for all of Ukraine to be conquered. Pro-war Russian bloggers, military officers, and TV talk show guests worked themselves into a frenzy of excitement. Anything was possible; no red lines could stop them now, not with their nuclear weapons.

The focus soon turned from Ukraine to the three Baltic states—Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—and a discussion of which should be attacked first and how many troops it would take to do the job. The three former Soviet republics have been NATO members since 2004, but Putin and his allies don’t believe any Western........

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