The Moscow authorities have unilaterally decided to change Russia’s maritime borders with Lithuania and Finland in the Baltic Sea, according to a draft government decree published last May by the Kremlin.

The draft proposes to approve a new list of geographical coordinates of the mainland coast, the Russian territorial sea, and the Baltic islands, which will alter the border in the western region of Kaliningrad.

According to Moscow, “the project’s approval will establish a missing straight baseline system on the southern part of the Russian islands in the eastern Gulf of Finland near Baltiysk and Zelenogradsk“. And it will allow their use “as inland waters. This will change the maritime border of the Russian state, due to a change in the outer borders of the territorial sea“.

The draft decree argues that the previous geographical coordinates would have been recorded based on marine navigation maps based on twentieth-century research, “do not fully correspond to the current geographical situation” and “do not allow the external boundary of the internal waters” of Russia to be determined. 

From the planning of a revision of the maritime borders in the Baltic Sea to the mystery of the buoys that disappeared along the Narva River, which delimits the border between Estonia and Russia. Putin’s Federation continues to fuel a strategy of tension with neighboring states while at war with Ukraine.

The signs removed from Estonian waters at the hands of Russian border guards may seem minor compared to the bombs falling on Ukrainian soil, but they have created quite a stir in Tallinn. According to a note from the Estonian police and border guard, it’s about 24 buoys that were removed during the night of last Thursday.

There are about 250 of them along the river and they have been there for decades: they have been placed to prevent navigation errors. These border markers were last placed by the respective border agencies in 2022 and never before had there been conflicting views on their placement. However, since last year, as the ERR broadcaster recalled, Russia has no longer agreed with the position of about half of the 250 goal scorers.

The reason for the Russian gesture has not yet been officially explained, as reported by the Estonian Eastern Border Guard. The Estonian government has also taken a position. Prime Minister Kaja Kallas said that this was a border incident and that the exact circumstances would be clarified.