ANALYSIS – And this may not be an idle threat. It is just the latest Russian campaign of hybrid warfare against NATO. A draft decree by the Russian Defense Ministry dated May 21 suggested Moscow will make minor unilateral adjustments to the country's maritime claims in the Baltic Sea.
If approved, it added, the decree would come into force in January 2025.
This can be seen as part of Valdimir Putin's plan to gain control of the Baltic Sea, otherwise known as a “NATO lake.”
According to the document Moscow intends to declare part of the waters in the eastern part of the Gulf of Finland and the area near Russia's Kaliningrad enclave towns of Baltiysk and Zelenogradsk as internal Russian waters.
The redrawn borders may affect the maritime zones of both Lithuania and the historically neutral Finland, both now NATO members. (RELATED: Putin's Plans For Dominating Europe's Baltic States Revealed)
Charly Salonius-Pasternak, leading researcher at the Finnish Institute for International Affairs (FIIA) said Moscow was sending a clear signal, reported Newsweek.
He added:
It is quite clearly calibrated to seem like a small, almost technically administrative thing, when in practice, its political repercussions are very serious.
It is completely immaterial that the border adjustments are only squares of meters, it's the principle of a country saying unilaterally, we are just going to change borders, it is obviously not acceptable. Finnish Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen suggested in a post on X that Moscow may be trying to sow confusion in the Baltic region. “It is worth remembering that causing confusion is also a hybrid influence,” she said. “Finland is not confused.”
According to Newsweek, the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry said that Moscow's actions “are seen as a deliberate, targeted, escalatory provocation to intimidate neighboring countries and their societies.”
“This is further proof that Russia's aggressive and revisionist policy is a threat to the security of neighboring countries and Europe as a whole,” the spokesperson added.
“Lithuania today is summoning a representative of the Russian Federation for a full explanation. We are also coordinating our response with partners.”
Meanwhile, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis, posted on X that NATO and the EU must respond firmly.
Newsweek added:
Top officials in Moscow have repeatedly threatened Finland, Sweden and the Baltic nations of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia since it launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Such threats have been twinned with suspected hybrid operations, including GPS interference and the weaponization of migrant flows across EU and NATO borders.
Zygimantas Pavilionis—a member of the Lithuanian parliament and the country's former ambassador to U.S.—told Newsweek on Wednesday that the Baltic “provocation” and other Russian actions should illicit a strong collective Western response.
“It's up to us to either stop Russia from violating international law and all other treaties, or actually invite them to occupy us,” Pavilionis said. “The question is always our side, not so much on Russia's, because Russia always expands, always occupies, and always kills.”
But this isn't Putin's only plan to expand in the Baltic.
A separate Newsweek piece notes that Supreme Commander of the Swedish Armed Forces Micael Byden just said that Putin has “both eyes on Gotland,” referring to the strategically important Swedish island, comparable in size to the state of Rhode Island, which lies at the center of the Baltic.
“Putin's goal is to gain control of the Baltic Sea,” he said. “Who controls Gotland controls the Baltic Sea.”
In March, Sweden also became a NATO member.
The outlet added:
Gotland, around 200 miles north of the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, is Sweden's largest island and its seizure by Moscow could threaten NATO countries from the sea. This could end “peace and stability in the Nordic and Baltic regions,” Byden said, “the Baltic Sea should not turn into Putin's playground.”
Instead of strongly worded statements, NATO should quickly launch naval freedom of navigation operations (FONOPS) in the newly disputed waters, similar to those the U.S. and our allies perform near Taiwan and China in the Pacific.
Actions, not words, are what Putin understands.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
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