Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania said on Sunday they had successfully synchronized their electricity systems to the European continental power grid, one day after severing decades-old energy ties to Russia and Belarus.
Planned for many years, the complex switch away from the grid of their former Soviet imperial overlord is designed to integrate the three Baltic nations more closely with the European Union and to boost the region's energy security.
After disconnecting on Saturday from the IPS/UPS network, established by the Soviet Union in the 1950s and now run by Russia, the Baltic nations cut cross-border high-voltage transmission lines in eastern Latvia, some 100 meters from the Russian border, handing out pieces of chopped wire to enthusiastic bystanders as keepsakes.
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, herself an Estonian, earlier this week called the switch "a victory for freedom and European unity."
The IPS/UPS grid was the final remaining link to Russia for the three countries, which re-emerged as independent nations in the early 1990s at the fall of the Soviet Union, and joined the European Union and NATO in 2004.
The three staunch supporters of Kyiv stopped purchases of power from Russia following Moscow's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 but have relied on the Russian grid to control frequencies and stabilize networks to avoid outages.
Posted by John3262005