History happens this weekend, when Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia desynchronise from the Soviet-era electricity grid that has kept the Baltic states connected to the same frequency as Russia and Belarus. Getting off it has been a long time coming — and comes while geopolitical tensions are running hot.
Switching over to the grid that most of the European Union is on sets the former Soviet republics one more step apart from their former occupiers. Baltic officials and security analysts are watching for what response that may provoke from Moscow — if it hasn't already.
Of the several energy links between the region and points west, the Baltics settled on the LitPol one — so-called because it connects Lithuania and Poland to the rest of continental Europe. The switch is less about energy supply than "frequency control," which is necessary for a safe and stable power supply. Until now, that role has been fulfilled by the Russian-run BRELL grid – an acronym for Belarus, Russia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
The switch won't be seamless. If all goes well, there will be about a one-day gap between moving from BRELL to the European continental grid, known as UCTE. For most of Saturday into Sunday, the three countries will function as an “energy island,” to test their system and leave it up to them to manage supply and demand. If all goes well, they will join UCTE by the end of the weekend.
“Energy companies and government agencies are implementing additional measures to mitigate risks, including by strengthening the protection of power infrastructure and increasing the preparedness to respond to cyber threats,” Lauri Läänemets, Estonia’s interior minister, told The Parliament.
Security risks
Given their geographic proximity to Russia and brutal Soviet history, the Baltic trio recognised the national security risks of relying on Russia for energy much earlier than the rest of the EU. They decided in 2007 to make the switch, and the Kremlin has shown its willingness to use energy as a weapon.
In 2015, a cyberattack on the Ukrainian power grid also affected parts of Lithuania. Russian-based disinformation campaigns, which try to scare Baltic populations about electricity costs, have increased as the region has moved closer to the desynchronisation day.
While hard evidence is difficult to come by, Baltic leaders see a connection between the scheduled decoupling and recent undersea cable cuttings in their region.
“The current geopolitical situation indicates that the region's energy infrastructure is vulnerable,” Žygimantas Vaičiūnas, Lithuania’s energy minister, told The Parliament. “This is clearly demonstrated by recent sabotage attempts in the Baltic Sea, including the latest damage to the EstLink 2 interconnection.”
Baltic energy officials have reported professional cooperation with Russian and Belarusian counterparts, yet that has not decreased concerns about Moscow's ability to harm countries that have been among the most outspoken against its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
“Being in the same system with Russia, Belarus and Kaliningrad means that Moscow can influence the functioning of the electricity grids of the Baltic states by not providing the right frequencies,” Justina Budginaite-Froehly, a researcher with the Foreign Policy Research Institute, told The Parliament. “So it can disrupt.”
Also likely to ruffle the Kremlin's feathers: Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave squeezed between Poland and Lithuania, will also be forced off the BRELL grid. In response, it has built power plants to operate as its own energy island.
Practical and economic constraints
Despite the sense of urgency, making the switch has not been easy or cheap. The three countries together have spent some 1.6 billion euros ($1.64 billion), 75% of which comes from EU budgets. Coordinating preparations among the three countries proved difficult, including ensuring enough new power lines, transformers and backup options to handle any problems that desynchronisation might present.
“Financing of such a complex and large-scale project, involving number of different countries and more than 40 separate infrastructure projects required solidarity and financial EU support,” Vaičiūnas said.
Protecting the energy infrastructure, which is a member-state issue, is also expensive and time consuming. In January, Lithuania’s Public Security Service (VST) announced it had begun protecting the Alytus switchyard and transformer substation of the LitPol link.
"The military has never been involved before, so this is a high alert,” Veronika Slakaityte, an analyst with the Danish Institute for International Studies, told The Parliament.
A second link to Poland is in the works, but it may not be operational until at least 2030.
Given the large distances these networks cover, there is only so much protection they can have. That's why it's not just a matter of how to “protect such lines physically, but also then how to make a system sufficiently resilient — that if any of these is damaged, that the system still operates without prices rising through the roof,” Catharina Sikow-Magny, European Coordinator for the Baltic Synchronisation project appointed by the European Commission, told The Parliament.
Kremlin-backed media have made claims about price hikes and social unrest due to desynchronisation. It's part of a long cyber and information war that Baltic officials consider themselves engaged in with Russia.
"People are really concerned about prices,” Slakaityte said. “Russians have been spreading this information for years. They are very good at it.”