The electricity grid operators of the three Baltic countries on Tuesday officially notified Russia and Belarus that they will exit a 2001 agreement that has kept Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania connected to an electricity transmission system controlled by Moscow.

  • AutoTL;DR@lemmings.worldB
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    4 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    VILNIUS, Lithuania (AP) — The electricity grid operators of the three Baltic countries on Tuesday officially notified Russia and Belarus that they will exit a 2001 agreement that has kept Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania connected to an electricity transmission system controlled by Moscow.

    Utility operators Elering of Estonia, AST of Latvia and Litgrid of Lithuania said that the exit notice was signed in the Latvian capital of Riga on Tuesday.

    The joint agreement with Moscow and Minsk will end Feb. 7, and the Baltic systems will be disconnected from the grid the next day.

    “We will disconnect and dismantle the last physical connections with Russian and Belarusian grids,” Litgrid CEO Rokas Masiulis said, calling the move an “ambitious energy independence project.”

    Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland agreed with the European Union’s executive commission in 2019 to coordinate on connecting the Baltic nations to the EU’s power network by the end of 2025.

    Lithuania wanted an energy exit as early as this year, citing Moscow’s unreliability and its aggression in Ukraine.


    The original article contains 432 words, the summary contains 170 words. Saved 61%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • Ð Greıt Þu̇mpkin@lemm.ee
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    4 months ago

    Sounds like Estonia figured out how to network cybersecurity with their neighbors, because Russia is gonna go absolutely nuts trying to attack their grid now.

  • anticolonialist@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    Is that going to be something like Europe saying they’re no longer going to buy Russian natural gas but then continue buying Russian natural gas?

  • fne8w2ah@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    They definitely know what it was like to suffer under Soviet repression, so no surprise here.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shock_Doctrine

      Klein argues that neoliberal free market policies (as advocated by the economist Milton Friedman) have risen to prominence in countries and regions such as the United States, the United Kingdom, China, the European Union, and Eastern Europe, because of a deliberate strategy of “shock therapy”. This centers on the exploitation of national crises (disasters or upheavals) to establish controversial and questionable policies, while citizens are too distracted (emotionally and physically) to engage and develop an adequate response and resist effectively. The book advances the idea that several man-made events, such as the Iraq War, were undertaken with the intention of pushing through unpopular free market capitalist policies in their wake.

      The Eastern Bloc suffered an enormous drop in living quality following the dissolution of the USSR. Far from reaping a bounty via free market liberty, the people in these countries found themselves the subject of a historic privatization and looting of national treasuries and resources.

      Bulgaria is an interesting data point. It’s economy collapsed during the '90, and was rapidly privatized in the '00s after the son of Tsar Boris III of Bulgaria (deposed in 1946) was installed as the state’s Prime Minister.

      Corruption under the former aristocrat soared, access to education and housing was stripped away, and the country’s most productive assets were sold off piecemeal to private investors.

      By the mid-10s, the country was wracked with the same street protests and riots that brought down the Soviet government. These protests only ended after a far right paramilitary backed government cracked down on public media and launched police raids against the largest dissident groups. The country currently has no functional government, as the PM-ship is passed between minority party stakeholders, crime is rampant, and poverty is endemic.

      • Bluetreefrog@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        The Eastern Bloc suffered an enormous drop in living quality following the dissolution of the USSR. Far from reaping a bounty via free market liberty, the people in these countries found themselves the subject of a historic privatization and looting of national treasuries and resources.

        This is a black and white perspective. You have to keep in mind that citizens of these countries were significantly worse off as (involuntarily) being part of the USSR than the countries that were not in the Eastern Bloc, and most of them are now significantly better off as part of the EU. Most citizens remember the repression, shortages, and russification all too well.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          You have to keep in mind that citizens of these countries were significantly worse off as (involuntarily) being part of the USSR than the countries that were not in the Eastern Bloc

          Which citizens? Migrants have been flooding out of the Eastern Bloc for decades.

          And what does “voluntary” membership in the EU look like when you’ve got five years of street rights that can only be quelled by tanks in the streets?

    • Allero@lemmy.today
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      4 months ago

      Honestly every country should be destroyed as a geopolitical entity; they separate us and allow for malicious actors to pit us against each other, while avoiding responsibility.

      Also, blyat’

  • Zahtu@feddit.org
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    4 months ago

    Well great thing. What will this mean to the Kaliningrad Region of Russia. As it is not directly connected to Russia and landlocked by Lithuania and Poland.

    • somethingsnappy@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      That is an interesting thought exercise. Would they really be cut off, and what would the impacts look like? I don’t know anything about Kaliningrad internal sustainability, but could guess it’s… not good. Time to annex?

      • Siegfried@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        Unless you are proposing a genocide (which I hope not), Königsberg is full of russians, which I doubt many countries would want to deal with right now.

        It is (or it was) the major military seaport in the baltic… and we are speaking about russia. They most likely generate their own power.

        On the long run, i think it should be annexed by the EU as a common land for the whole union.

        Edit: Just checked, they mainly produce energy with gasoil and are apparently currently importing energy from EU to satisfy internal demand. They also have a nuclear power plant of 2,34 MW (2 VVER) under construction. They built it under the idea of producing energy to export but as they failed to find buyers, construcción was halt.

        • Plopp@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          On the long run, i think it should be annexed by the EU as a common land for the whole union

          What about we turn it into a great nudist LGBTQ+ friendly resort? With rainbows and unicorns and blahajs and what not.

        • vxx@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          2,34MW seems pretty low for a nuclear power plant. For comparison, the smallest nuclear plant in the US produces 568MW

        • 5714@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          4 months ago

          Kaliningrad is not called Königsberg anymore. There was a war over this.

          On the long run, I think it should be annexed by the EU.

          This is imperialism. IMO, the people of the Oblast Kaliningrad should be able to decide for themselves since the Russian Federation is de jure a federation. Once independent, Kaliningrad would be able to go through EU’s process of entry into the union.

          I don’t see this happening anytime soon, because Russia is de facto neither a federation nor a democracy and I assume the people of Kaliningrad do not have the political will to be independent or part of the EU at the moment.

      • azvasKvklenko@sh.itjust.works
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        4 months ago

        As a Pole, I want Kaliningrad to be renamed to Królewiec (or Kralovec for that matter), all Russians deported and the land split evenly for Czechs and Slovaks so that they finally get their sea access.

        • Lad@reddthat.com
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          4 months ago

          Ethnically cleanse Russians from Kaliningrad, annex the territory and fill it with ethnic Czechs and Slovaks. Not fascistic at all…

          • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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            4 months ago

            As Europe returns to it’s fascist roots, I’m afraid this sentiment is going to steadily increase in popularity.

            Strap in for another 30 Years War.

    • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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      4 months ago

      If they can’t generate their own, I’d guess they’d have to buy it from a neighbour. The agreement isn’t a total lack of trade, but withdrawing from Russia having control over their grids.

      Of course that means they’d have to behave in Kalingrad, else they’d see power cut off. Personally I thing Moscow has the resources to build a power plant in Kalingrad if they haven’t already.