Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia disconnected high-voltage power lines linking them to Russia and Belarus on Saturday; their grid then operated autonomously for a day before connecting to the European grid via Poland on Sunday.
A clock in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius counted down to the occasion. Energy companies across the region said that consumers didn’t notice the change.
The move was the culmination of a five-year effort, helped by €1.6 billion ($1.65 billion) in European Union funding, to overhaul the Baltic region’s Soviet-era infrastructure.
Energy security was equated with national security for the three states on NATO’s eastern flank, all of which border Russia and are staunch supporters of Ukraine in its resistance against Russia’s full-scale invasion.
“Today, history is made,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in Vilnius, standing alongside the presidents of Poland and the Baltic states to mark the transition.
“Electricity lines with Russia and Belarus are being dismantled. These chains of power lines linking you to hostile neighbors will be a thing of the past. This is freedom, freedom from threats, freedom from blackmails,” von der Leyen said.
The three nations have long accused Russia of weaponizing energy supplies to reward friends and punish enemies. Although they stopped importing oil, natural gas and electricity from Russia in 2022, Baltic governments still depended on Moscow to manage grid frequency. That meant Russia retained some ability to control the region’s power supplies.
“This is a strong signal to Russia that we’re leaving the last system we belonged to,” Lithuanian Foreign Affairs Minister Kestutis Budrys said last week in an interview to Bloomberg TV.
Budrys said it was also a “strong signal” to European allies that energy independence is possible — “it takes time and investment but first of all it takes strong political will,” he said.
In recent months, European leaders have sought to raise attention to the security of the shallow and strategically important Baltic Sea, where multiple undersea power cables have been damaged under suspicious circumstances. The region dispatched military vessels to patrol their subsea power lines.
Source：FINANCIAL POST
