Baltic Sea nations react warily to reported Russia ‘proposal’

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COPENHAGEN, Denmark, May 22, (AP): Leaders around the Baltic Sea reacted warily Wednesday to reports that Russia could revise the borders of its territorial waters in the region, with Lithuania’s foreign minister calling it an “obvious escalation” that must be met with an “appropriately firm response.”
In a draft proposal reported by some Russian media, Russia’s Defense Ministry suggests updating the coordinates used to measure the strip of territorial waters off its mainland coast and that of its islands in the Baltic Sea. The existing coordinates were approved in 1985, the ministry says; adding they were “based on small-scale nautical navigation maps” and don’t correspond to the “modern geographical situation.”
It wasn’t immediately clear from the draft whether the proposed changes would shift the border or merely clarify it.
Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said Russia had signed a United Nations convention that regulates how to make such changes. “Both we and Finland assume that Russia – which is a signatory party to that convention – lives up to that responsibility,” he said, according to Swedish news agency TT.
If Russians were to challenge borders, “then Russia violates a UN convention, then Russia has the whole world against it,” Finland’s Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen said, according to Finnish broadcaster YLE.
She said, however, it likely was a routine act by Russia and not a provocation.
Finnish President Alexander Stubb wrote on X that Russia had not been in contact with Finland on the matter. “Finland acts as always: calmly and based on facts,” he wrote.

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