The Baltic states have permanently cut off their connection to Russia's energy system, which has supplied them with electricity for decades, and from today they will officially connect to electricity supplied via Finland, Sweden and Poland, Euro News reported.
Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania joined the European electricity system on Sunday (February 9) in an official ceremony that highlighted the historic significance of the fact that they are now independent of the Russian energy system.
"We did it!" this was written by Latvian President Edgars Rinkėvičius on the social network X.
The new pact comes more than three decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union, which ended the Baltic countries' final ties with oil and gas-rich Russia. For the three countries, as well as the rest of Europe, the move is loaded with geopolitical and symbolic significance. On Saturday, all remaining power lines between them and Russia, Belarus and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, wedged between EU members Poland and Lithuania and the sea, were disconnected one by one. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, as well as the presidents of Poland and the Baltic states, attended the ceremony in Vilnius on Sunday evening along with other dignitaries. The Baltic states, which are members of NATO, have often had difficult communication with Russia since declaring independence from the Soviet Union in 1990, with relations reaching a new low following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The sixteen power lines that connected the Baltic states to Russia and Belarus have been dismantled in recent years as a new network connecting NATO countries with the rest of the EU, including through undersea cables in the Baltic Sea.
The three Baltic states, which together share a 1,633-kilometer border with Russia and Belarus, have informed Moscow and Minsk of the plan to cut off the border as early as 2024 to prevent any hostile reaction.
The Bundeswehr has again detected suspicious drones over a base where Ukrainian soldiers are trained and is investigating possible espionage. According to an internal report first cited by the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper over the weekend, unidentified drones were spotted six times over the Schwessing base in January. Despite the use of special jamming equipment, the Bundeswehr was unable to force the unknown drones to land and detect their pilots, writes Spiegel.
The North Sea air base is considered a special security zone not only because German soldiers are trained there on the Patriot air defense system. For several months, Ukrainian soldiers have also been trained here in the use of the highly effective system, several of which have already been delivered to Ukraine. The Bundeswehr assumes that the base was spied on because of the Patriot training, and Russian secret services are among the main suspects in such incidents.
Monitoring the overflights of unknown drones has become a sad routine for the German armed forces. Since the troops began training Ukrainian soldiers, drones have repeatedly appeared over the relevant bases, and cars that could be traced to the Russian embassy in Berlin due to their diplomatic license plates have also been spotted outside the gates on several occasions. “Sometimes it seems as if the enemy wants to see us, that he is trying to spy on us,” a Bundeswehr general recently commented.