Today, Saturday, the Baltic countries are drawing Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania from contact with Russia and Belarus.
Instead, they should connect to the European electricity grid.
The action is considered to have both symbolic and geopolitical significance.
It has been going on for a long time.
But on Saturday – over three decades after the dissolution of the Soviet Union – the Baltic countries Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania will disconnect their electricity grids from the Russian synchronous area. A total of 16 cables should be shut down.
The countries will instead connect to the Western European electricity grid.
“The heart of our energy system will hit the same rhythm as the Western European system,” Zygimantas Vaiciunas, Minister of Energy in Lithuania, told the Lithuanian news site Delfi.
Since Russia’s full -scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the former Soviet states have stopped buying energy from Russia. The disconnection of the cables is therefore likely to have relatively small consequences for the electricity supply.
Symbolic meaning
However, the action is deemed to have geopolitical and symbolic significance.
– We remove Russia’s ability to use the electrical system as a tool for geopolitical extortion, says Zygimantas Vaiciunas according to AFP.
The three Baltic nations, which together have a 1,633 long limit to Russia and Belarus, informed Minsk and Moscow about the plans in July.
Kreml’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said at a press conference this week that Russia has taken preparatory measures for the transition to go smoothly.
“Those plans were announced for a long time, and they demanded certain measures from our and their electricity companies,” he said, according to Ap.