Missing Baltic buoys mark out maritime border faultlines

The writer is adviser to Gallos Technologies, and author of ‘Goodbye Globalization’

In the early hours of May 23, Russian officials appeared in the Narva River, which divides Russia and Estonia, and removed the buoys that mark the maritime border. With this simple act, Russia demonstrated its intention to challenge such boundaries. China is already fiercely contesting the maritime borders of several countries in its neighbourhood. This matters because if nations don’t respect them, the global maritime system will falter.

It was a cloak-and-dagger operation: around 3am local time, Russian border guard officers turned up and simply hoicked out the buoys indicating Estonia’s side of the river. For years, the buoys and their predecessor markers have been there, showing ship crews and the rest of the world where Russia’s side of the river ends and Estonia’s side begins. But last year, Russia let it be known that it no longer approved of the buoys’ placement; now it has removed them. “It was a pure Russian provocation, the purpose of which is to test our response and an attempt to create a grey area on Nato’s borders,” Marko Mihkelson, chair of the Estonian Parliament’s foreign affairs committee, told me. 

In a statement, Estonia’s foreign ministry declared that the removal of the buoys “fits well within the broader pattern of Russia’s provocative behaviour, including on its borders with neighbours, most recently vis-à-vis Lithuania and Finland”. The latter was a reference to another apparent case of Russian maritime border interventions just a couple of days earlier. Russia’s defence ministry was, Russian news outlets reported, planning to unilaterally alter sections of the country’s maritime borders with Finland and Lithuania.

So there’s trouble in the Baltic Sea and other waters in its neighbourhood — even though many assumed that the accession of Sweden and Finland had made the tiny ocean a “Nato lake”. And these incidents illustrate a growing headache: there are lots of ways in which a country can harm its neighbours at sea.

In the South China Sea, Beijing has enforced its self-declared “nine-dash line” maritime border by building militarised artificial islands. In both the South China Sea and the East China Sea, the country’s massive coast guard is conducting increasingly intense harassment of vessels linked to other countries, especially Japan and the Philippines. The objective is to wear down other countries and force them to live with Beijing’s maritime claims. 

Even though violations of maritime borders seem less dramatic than soldiers crossing land borders, they’re as significant. They too define what belongs to a country. If violated or unilaterally altered, then water-based activities like shipping face turmoil and the rules on which the world’s nations base their coexistence begin to falter.

Indeed, even before the latest incidents it was clear that Nato enlargement has hardly made the Baltic Sea a placid lake. On the contrary, Russia may turn to innovative ways to harm its Baltic Sea neighbours.

For months, “shadow” vessels, old and poorly maintained, with shady ownership and lacking internationally recognised insurance, have been menacing several neighbouring countries by carrying oil through their waters in an inherently risky manner. In a further provocation, some of the ships loiter off the coast of Gotland and refuse pilotage in Denmark’s Great Belt, which heightens the risk of accidents. “They’re testing the waters, both metaphorically and literally,” Vytautas Leškevičius, a Lithuanian former ambassador to Nato, told me.

What will the Kremlin try next? More maritime border changes? Harassment of merchant vessels in the manner of China or a blockade of shipping in the Baltic Sea under the guise of law enforcement? Either way, it will have repercussions far beyond the EU’s second-busiest body of water. Baltic Sea countries can’t afford even a mild case of sea blindness.