Poland proposes Baltic Sea military patrols to counter Russia
The initiative follows the suspected sabotage of a submarine telecoms cable last week.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Wednesday he wanted to launch a “navy policing” program to secure the Baltic Sea against Russian threats.
Speaking to reporters in Warsaw ahead of a summit of Nordic and Baltic leaders in Sweden, Tusk said the initiative would be “a joint venture of countries located at the Baltic Sea, which have the same sense of threat posed by Russia.”
“If Europe is united, then Russia is a technological, financial and economic dwarf in relation to Europe,” he added. “But if Europe is divided, Russia poses a threat to each and every European country individually.”
The suggestion comes after a 1,000-kilometer-long undersea telecoms cable linking Finland and Germany, and another connecting Sweden to Lithuania were severed last week. A Chinese-flagged ship that departed Russia and sailed through the Baltic Sea is suspected of being involved.
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius dubbed it an act of “sabotage.” Moscow, which has stepped up its hybrid warfare campaign in Europe since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, called suggestions that Russia had anything to do with the broken cables “ridiculous.” Beijing has also denied any involvement.
Nine countries — Sweden, Denmark, Russia, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Germany, and Poland — border the Baltic Sea. Russian naval fleets are docked in St. Petersburg and the exclave of Kaliningrad.
Sweden’s former defense chief Micael Bydén warned in May that the Kremlin wanted to take control of the strategically important sea, cautioning that it “must not become Putin’s playground where he terrifies NATO members.”
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