With Baltic energy systems soon operating in harmony with those in continental Europe, the Regional security agenda shifts from concerns over security of energy supply to the protection of critical energy infrastructure.
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania announced yesterday that they had successfully connected to the European electricity grid, a day after they broke away from Russia’s. The Baltic states have been planning a complex move to separate themselves from the Soviet-era grid used by Russia and Belarus for decades, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine has accelerated that process. Connecting to the European grid will further integrate the three countries with the European Union and strengthen the security of their electricity systems. “We did it!” Latvian President Edgars Rinkevičs wrote on the X platform.
Three countries broke away from the IPS/UPS network, created in the 1950s, on Saturday morning. A hundred meters from the Russian border, the cables connecting them to that country were cut and their pieces were distributed to the crowd as souvenirs. The EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Kaja Kallas, herself an Estonian, earlier this week declared the breakaway from the Soviet network a “victory for European freedom and unity.”
THE LAST CONNECTION WITH RUSSIA
The Baltic Region is on alert after a number of undersea power, telecommunications or gas links in the Region failed. Russia is believed to be behind some of them, although Moscow denies this. Poland and the Baltic states sent the navy, elite police forces and helicopters to the scene after an undersea power cable between Finland and Estonia was damaged in December. The Lithuanian military has begun work that will protect the land link with Poland.
Analysts warn that further damage to the power system would push energy prices in the Region to levels seen in the Baltics at the start of the Russian invasion. The IPS/UPS grid was Russia’s last connection to the three countries, independent after the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, members of the European Union and NATO since 2004. Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia stopped buying electricity from Russia after the invasion, but continued to rely on the Russian grid for frequency control and stability of supply.
“DIVORCE”
The separation process took years due to numerous technological and financial problems and the need to diversify supplies in the meantime, particularly through submarine cables, writes Agence France Presse. For Russia, the separation means that its Kaliningrad enclave, located between Lithuania, Poland and the Baltic Sea, remains disconnected from Russia’s main grid, leaving it to maintain its own electricity system. The Baltic states have spent almost 1.6 billion euros since 2018 on improving the networks and Moscow has invested $1 billion in building several gas-fired power plants in Kaliningrad.
The Risks
Although Russia will no longer exert direct influence over the Baltic states’ energy supply and control of the system, Moscow can now focus on targeting their critical energy, communications, and data infrastructure. As of October 2023, at least eleven cables running under the Baltic Sea have been damaged. This includes the Balticconnector undersea gas pipeline between Estonia and Finland; communications cables connecting Finland, Germany, Sweden, and Lithuania; and the Estlink 2 power cable between Estonia and Finland.
A data cable between Latvia and Sweden was damaged on January 26. The Lithuanian government is responding with increased military involvement in protecting critical offshore energy infrastructure under the Baltic Sea amid an attempted sabotage of the NordBalt power cable connecting it to Sweden. With Baltic energy systems soon operating in harmony with those in continental Europe, the Regional security agenda is shifting from concerns over security of energy supply to the protection of critical energy infrastructure.
