As is often the case with her speeches, Annalena Baerbock begins with a figurative comparison. On Friday afternoon, the Green Foreign Minister is standing in a conference room in the small Finnish town of Porvoo, half an hour from Helsinki.
“When you look at the blue Baltic Sea on a sunny day like today,” says Baerbock, smiling, “you could literally think that nobody can muddy the water here.” The tides in the Baltic Sea are not as strong, the minister continues, but: “The current underneath has been quite turbulent since February 24 two years ago.”
Baerbock flew to Finland for two days to take part in a format that hardly anyone was interested in just a few years ago: a meeting of the Baltic Sea Council, this year under the presidency of Helsinki. The regional body includes all Baltic Sea states as well as Norway and Iceland. The Council was originally founded in 1992 by Germany and Denmark to include the Baltic states that had become independent after the Cold War. For a long time, the Baltic Sea Council was considered one of the last remaining cooperation formats with Russia.
But times have changed. After Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, Russian membership and Belarusian observer status were suspended in March 2022, and two months later Russia announced its withdrawal. At first it was unclear whether the Baltic Sea Council would continue to exist at all – until, on German initiative, it was decided to expand cooperation.
“Geopolitics has always been reflected in the Baltic Sea, but in these times in a particularly dramatic way,” said Baerbock at the joint press conference with her Finnish counterpart Elina Valtonen and Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna after the meeting.
Security tensions have been increasing in the Baltic Sea – a holiday region for many Germans – since the war in Ukraine. Since Finland and Sweden joined NATO, almost the entire coastal area has belonged to the military alliance – with the exception of the Kaliningrad exclave and the area around St. Petersburg. But at the same time, pinpricks and provocations from Moscow are increasing.
“Russia feels threatened and is increasingly trying to intimidate Finland and the Baltic states through hybrid warfare,” says Alexander Friedman, professor of contemporary and Eastern European history at Saarland University and Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf. These include sabotage, cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns. Baerbock emphasized in her speech that the hybrid attacks show that the Russian war of aggression is also an attack “on our entire European peace order.”
For example, the GPS signals of aircraft and ships are repeatedly disrupted. The airline Finnair had to stop landings in Tartu, Estonia, until the end of May due to constant disruptions. Since December last year, GPS disruptions have also been reported sporadically from the north-eastern part of German airspace, the German Ministry of Defense announced in February. “Russia wants to show the West that it knows no moral boundaries – and would also be prepared to accept the crash of Western aircraft,” says Friedman.
In addition, at the end of May, Russian border guards are said to have removed buoys marking the shipping routes in the Narva River on the Russian-Estonian border. The river marks the eastern external border of the EU and NATO. Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas said it appeared to be part of a “broader pattern” by Moscow of spreading “fear and terror” through border actions.
A few days earlier, alleged plans by the Russian Defense Ministry were made public, according to which Russia was planning to shift its maritime borders. This would mean that the territorial waters of Finland and the Baltic states would be defined as Russian territory. A short time later, the passage disappeared from the corresponding draft law.
“If the Russian government was really serious about moving the maritime border, it would keep the plan secret,” says Friedman. Instead, Moscow wanted to test the Western public with the move – with little success. “Neither Finland, Sweden nor the Baltic countries have panicked or become more cautious in their support of Ukraine.”
The Eastern European expert assumes that the timing of the publication could also have something to do with Germany. Because on that very day, Defense Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD) was in Lithuania, where a Bundeswehr brigade is to be stationed. “Russia obviously wanted to show the German population: If there is a conflict, your Bundeswehr will be right in the middle of it. Do you really want that?”
However, the most pressing issue at the Baltic Sea Council meeting was Russia’s dangerous shadow fleet. Several Western countries accuse Moscow of relying on ships that are sometimes barely seaworthy in order to circumvent EU sanctions for the war of aggression. In doing so, Russia wants to evade a Western price cap on Russian oil exports to third countries using ships that are neither owned by Western shipping companies nor insured by Western insurers, according to the final declaration of the Baltic Sea Council. The fear of the neighboring countries: an oil leak with catastrophic consequences for the environment and the tourism industry.
As if that were not enough, Russia is accused of exploiting migrants to destabilize Finland. Last year, between August and November, almost a thousand migrants showed up at the Finnish-Russian border and wanted to apply for asylum. According to reports, Russia – unlike the Belarusian-Polish border – did not bring the people there in a concerted action, but apparently let them pass benevolently. The Finns are very afraid that the situation could escalate in the future.
In December, Finland therefore closed all border crossings and stopped examining individual asylum applications. The right-wing conservative government is working on a law to legalize this previously illegal practice, known as pushbacks, in exceptional cases – which is meeting with considerable resistance from the Finnish public. “Finland has a long democratic tradition and insists strongly on the observance of human rights,” says Friedman. “In Poland and the Baltic states, on the other hand, blanket rejections are perceived much more calmly.”
At the end of the meeting of the Baltic Sea Council, Finnish Foreign Minister Valtonen thanked the traffic light coalition. “We have greatly appreciated the Federal Republic of Germany’s policy of turning a corner over the past 2.5 years.” She then added – presumably aimed at those in Germany who are demanding less aid for Ukraine: “Unfortunately, we on the border with Russia do not have the luxury of thinking that the war is none of our business.” Russia will pose an existential threat to the whole of Europe for the foreseeable future. This threat, says Valtonen, will not go away if we duck away.
Baerbock is asked by a journalist about the European elections. Does the disastrous results for the Greens have anything to do with her foreign policy? In the future, she will not “pursue a foreign policy that is based on short-term domestic political campaign tactics,” Baerbock replies. She sees it as her responsibility as Foreign Minister to make it clear, even during election campaigns, “that the security of the Baltic states, that the security of Eastern Europe is the security of Germany.”
