Ministry of Defense of russia announced a unilateral revision of the state border of the russian federation in the Baltic Sea on May 22, and the following day switched to proactive behavior. However, the activities by the russian military personnel take place not in the sea but in a river dividing russia from Estonia, a NATO member country.
Overnight May 23, russian border guards removed the buoys placed in the Narva River on Estonian territory which are used to mark the navigable fairway. A total of 24 buoys out of 50 were set in their place on May 13; the overall number of them planned for installation is 250. The Estonian side filmed the actions by russian border guards and published the footage.
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This situation has already become the subject of a press conference with the participation of Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, Foreign Affairs Minister Margus Tsahkna, and Eerik Purgel, chief of the border guard service.
On a note from Defense Express, the incident only looks insignificant at first glance. However, the important part here is that the river border on Narva runs right on top of the fairway. Thus, moving or removing buoys by russian border guards are actions on the territory declared by Estonia as its own.
“Whereas the temporary control line is permanently marked at the land border, the riverbed changes over time, which is why we recheck the marking of the shipping routes every spring. While before the beginning of the war in Ukraine, the installation of buoys largely passed by mutual agreement, then from 2023 Russia does not agree with Estonia’s positions regarding the location of the buoys,” Purgel said, as quoted by Estonian Police and Border Guard Board.
Therefore, Estonia decided to install the buoys where they were in 2022. But the russian federation disagreed with the placement of approximately half of them and removed them without prior notice. Currently, Estonia has officially appealed to the russian federation with a demand to explain its actions and provide evidence of the change of the fairway. It should be noted that the 77-km-long Narva River flows from the Gulf of Finland to Peipus Lake.
For the context, we should also add the reactions from Estonian officials. In particular, the head of the government Kaja Kallas stated that a "sober approach" has been taken to this issue and there is communication both with allies and with the russian federation. Then, the Minister of Interior Affairs Lauri Läänemets called the actions by russian border guards an attempt to destabilize the internal situation in Estonia:
"We already know the pattern of our eastern neighbor and know that the purpose of all this is to sow fear and confusion in us, let's not give them the gift of falling into the trap of their actions. The sense of security is high in Estonia and the state always takes preventive as well as countermeasures, when necessary. No need to worry," Läänemets wrote on his Facebook social media page.
Against this background, Defense Express remarks that if we try and look at this situation completely detached from current realities, then the issue of some buoys on the Narva River stretching for 100–200 meters at most, does not seem to be worthy of such resonance. But we, after all, are talking russian federation and the Kremlin's tactics of gradual pressure on its neighbors.
If now Estonia is not reacting to the change of borders, even if it's just a few or a dozen meters, of course, no one will start World War III because of that. Although this premise seems to be correct, the real question is, what's the exact number of meters or maybe kilometers it takes to start one.
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