Russia plans to unilaterally change maritime borders with Lithuania and Finland. The announcement causes alarm.
The Russian government plans to unilaterally change the maritime borders with Lithuania and Finland. This is reported by “RBC” and “Reuters”. The document describing the proposed changes was prepared by the Russian Ministry of Defense.
Russia wants to declare the eastern part of the Gulf of Finland and maritime areas near the Kaliningrad region as national waters. This would affect land belonging to Finland and Lithuania.
The defense ministry’s justification for the changes is that the current geographical coordinates, established in 1985, “do not fully correspond to the current geographical situation”. It is argued that the points were established on the basis of nautical charts from the mid-20th century, which “do not allow determining the outer limit of Russian internal waters.”
Finland’s Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen said Russia should abide by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. It remains to be seen how NATO will respond to this new Russian provocation.