Russian authorities have made a unilateral decision to change the sea borders of Russia with Lithuania and Finland in the Baltic Sea.
This comes from a draft government resolution published on the portal of legal acts of the Russian Federation.
According to the document drafted by the Russian defense ministry, Russia intends 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.
To do that, geographic coordinates of the points that determine the position of the baselines from which the width of the territorial sea of the Russian Federation is measured, as well as the adjacent zone off the coast and islands will be changed.
At the border with Finland, the Russian government intends to correct the coordinates in the area of the islands of Yahi, Sommers, Holland, Rodsher, Maly Tyuters, Vigrund, as well as near the northern entrance cape of the Narva River, which comes from the appendix to the Cabinet of Ministers.
On the border with Lithuania, the area of the Curonian Spit in the Gulf of Gdansk, the areas of Cape Taran, the cape south of Cape Taran, as well as the Baltic Spit came under review. The current geographical coordinates established by the USSR Council of Ministers in 1985 “do not fully correspond to the modern geographical situation,” the authors of the project claim.
The points were recorded “using small-scale maritime navigation charts,” which, in turn, were based on works from the mid-20th century, and this “does not allow us to determine the external boundary of the internal sea waters” of the Russian Federation, the document says.
As a result of the changes, “a previously absent system of straight baselines will be established on the southern part of the Russian islands in the eastern part of the Gulf of Finland, as well as in the area of Baltiysk and Zelenogradsk, allowing the corresponding water areas to be used as internal sea waters of the Russian Federation; The passage of the State border of the Russian Federation at sea will change due to a change in the position of the external border of the territorial sea,” the authors of the project explained.
The 40-year-old resolution of the USSR Council of Ministers regulating the borders in the Baltic Sea is proposed by the Ministry of Defense to be partially “recognized as ineffective” (section “Baltic Sea”).
