Lithuania ramps up power grid security ahead of Russia decoupling

Lithuania says it’s ramping up security around the country’s electricity link with Poland ahead of their planned disconnection from the Baltic region’s power systems, a Soviet-era grid shared with Russia and Belarus.

Lithuanian Prime Minister Gintautas Paluckas says the government has asked police forces to protect the power link shared with Warsaw.

After recent incidents and suspected sabotage in the Baltic Sea, Vilnius believes it’s crucial to ensure security measures around the LitPol Link are intensified.

Last month, the former Lithuanian government decided to increase security of the LitPol’s converter and transformer station near the city of Alytus in southern Lithuania. That mission was outsourced to a private security company, who were contracted to protect the premises until spring. They would then handover the protection duty to the country’s Public Security Service.

Paluckas, who assumed office on 12 December, announced on Wednesday that his cabinet has decided to begin the transition process next week.

“We evaluate every possible version of sabotage, from cybersecurity to physical actions. Therefore, we deploy the Public Security Service, because it has the most experience in protecting the critical objects. They will replace private security services that have been protecting these objects,” said Paluckas at a press conference.

Lithuania says the Baltic Sea has for some time been “very peculiar” as incidents of undersea infrastructure damage and destruction increased.

“Either it's intentional or unintentional, the number of these incidents will increase. The Baltic Sea is very peculiar, it's relatively shallow and cables are not that deep. Therefore, these incidents will repeat, because Russia is using the shadow fleet,” said Giedrimas Jeglinskas, Chairman of Parliament Committee on National Security and Defence.

Vilnius says it is observing “clear and unambiguous attempts by opponents to disrupt” their planned decoupling from the Russian energy systems, according to the office of the Lithuanian prime minister. They offered no further detail as to what those attempts are or who could be behind them.

The government did however provide assurances to the public asserting that there are no scenarios in which the country would be left without power. Officials also added that if disruptions do indeed occur, they will not steer the country away from its long-time goal of disconnecting from the Kremlin’s electricity grid.  

“There is no scenario in which Lithuania would be left without electricity. We've evaluated all scenarios, including operating without any interconnections. Those reserves have been assessed, and scenarios A, B, C, D and so on have been worked out. Perhaps the most important message that we want to communicate is the following: Despite any provocations that could occur, any incidents, the disconnection from BRELL [Belarus, Russia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania] – the Russian electricity grid – is inevitable and will happen in exactly one month,” noted Arnoldas Pikzirnis, Lithuanian Vice Energy Minister.

The Baltic states expect to decouple from the Russian energy grid shared with Belarus on 8 February.

They then plan to take-over the responsibility for running their own national grids which have been seeing years of steady upgrades. The development of those grids was supported by €1.6 billion of European funding.