2024-12-31 12:54 update: 2025-01-01, 11:24
Photo: PAP/Radek Pietruszka
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has vowed to strengthen military security over the Baltic Sea, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Tuesday, reporting on the information he had received from Rutte.
The prime minister, who revealed Rutte's message while opening a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, said that security will take centre stage in the political arena in 2025. This topic will also gain prominence during the Polish EU presidency, as merely hours remained before Warsaw was set to assume the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union.
The statement came a few days after Rutte announced NATO's increased military presence in Baltic waters.
Speaking of his recent talks with EU officials from Estonia and Finland, Tusk said, "The Polish voice has started influencing specific decisions.
"After the first few incidents in the Baltic Sea, after these strange situations with Russian and Chinese ships, and after the disruption of various underwater cables in the Baltic, which greatly concerned all the countries bordering the Baltic Sea, we proposed that the Baltic become an area of enhanced military control by NATO and the Baltic states, similar to the protection of our airspace," the prime minister said.
The Baltic Sea has again hit international media headlines after the underwater cables connecting Finland and Estonia were damaged last week. This incident added to a string of similar situations in this sea throughout 2024. The European Commission's vice president, Kaja Kallas, stated that the vessel involved in the most recent incident belonged to Moscow's so-called "shadow fleet." The term refers to a group of older ships that Russia uses to transport its oil, particularly in the Baltic Sea. This tactic aids Moscow's efforts to evade EU sanctions targeting Russian oil trade. (PAP)
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