Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has called for “navy policing” in the Baltic Sea to be carried out by countries in the region in order to counter Russia.
Tusk came up with the proposal on Wednesday before traveling to Sweden for a meeting of the heads of governments of the Baltic and Nordic nations.
He noted that NATO countries had already begun carrying out “air policing” above the territory of the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia.
“I will convince our partners of the need to immediately create an analogous formula when it comes to the control and security of the Baltic waters, to ‘navy policing,’” the prime minister told journalists.
According to Tusk, such patrols should be “a joint undertaking of the countries that lie on the Baltic Sea and that have the same sense of threat when it comes to Russia.”
“If Europe is united, then Russia is a technological, financial and economic dwarf in relation to Europe. But if Europe is divided, Russia poses a threat to each and every European country individually,” he claimed.
A total of nine countries have access to the Baltic Sea: Russia, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Germany, and Poland.
The Polish prime minister made his proposal shortly after two underwater cables in the Baltic Sea – going from Finland to Germany and from Sweden to Lithuania, respectively – were severed. German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius called the incident an act of “sabotage,” while Western media reports claimed that the damage was inflicted by a Chinese-registered merchant vessel that had a Russian captain.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov responded to the allegation by saying that “it is quite absurd to continue to blame Russia for everything without any grounds.”
It is not Russia but “Ukraine that prefers to engage in acts of sabotage and terrorism on the bottom of the Baltic Sea,” Peskov pointed out, referring to Kiev’s alleged involvement in blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines in September 2022.
In August, Nikolay Patrushev, the former head of Russia’s Security Council, who currently serves as an aide to President Vladimir Putin, warned that “the West is seeking to deprive Russia of access to the Baltic Sea.” According to Patrushev, NATO’s newest members – Sweden and Finland – are being used in an attempt to turn it into “the bloc’s ‘internal sea.’”
