On the night of May 23, the Russians removed more than 20 buoys installed in Estonian waters by the border guard of Estonia to mark the fairway.
This was stated by the head of the Border Guard Bureau of the Ida Prefecture, Eerik Purgel, writes ERR.
According to him, every spring, Estonia and Russia install buoys marking the fairway in the Narvi River. This is due to the fact that the course of the river changes over time, so the markings of the fairway are revised every spring.
Until 2022, this process took place by mutual agreement, but since last year, the Russian Federation does not agree with Estonian positions on the placement of buoys.
"We decided to put up the buoys for the summer season under the 2022 agreement, because they are needed to avoid navigational errors, so that our fishermen and vacationers do not enter Russian waters by mistake," he said.
Russia has said it disagrees with the locations of about half of the 250 buoys. The first 50 buoys were installed on May 13. On Thursday night, Estonian border guards discovered that Russian border guards had removed 24 pieces overnight, some of which belonged to disputed buoys.
The Estonian Foreign Ministry has already responded to the incident. They said that the actions of the Russian Federation fit well into the broader scheme of Russiaʼs provocative behavior, including on its borders with its neighbors, in particular Lithuania and Finland.
"We will inform the Russian Federation about the inadmissibility of such actions, demand an explanation regarding the removal of the buoys and their immediate return," the message reads.
- A few days earlier, the authorities of the Russian Federation unilaterally decided to change the countryʼs maritime borders with Lithuania and Finland in the Baltic Sea. The Russian Ministry of Defense proposed to declare part of the water area in the east of the Gulf of Finland, as well as near the cities of Baltiysk and Zelenogradsk in the Kaliningrad region, as its internal sea waters.
- Subsequently, after the indignation of Lithuania and Finland , the corresponding project disappeared from the portal of projects of normative legal acts.