Former Latvian Foreign Minister Krisjanis Karins has insisted that NATO is going to dominate the Baltic Sea once Sweden follows Finland’s example and formally becomes a member of the Western military bloc.
Sweden’s accession is going to turn the Baltic Sea into a “NATO lake”, Karins said while being interviewed by a British media outlet, insisting on the need to contain Russia.
The Latvian politician, who currently seeks to become NATO’s next secretary general, attempted to portray Russia as a threat and argued that a long-term containment strategy against Moscow is required.
Karins is not the only politician to describe the Baltic Sea as a “NATO lake” in the wake of Finland’s and Sweden’s move to join the bloc.
Last May, Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsakhna used this very term in an interview with Newsweek as he stressed the importance of “neighboring countries as big as Finland and Sweden, and powerful as they are, in the same alliance" as his own country.
The damage to the Balticconnector pipeline last October also prompted Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics to declare that NATO should close the Baltic Sea for Russia if Moscow was responsible for damaging the pipe.
However, retired US Air Force Lt. Col and former Pentagon analyst Karen Kwiatkowski earlier voiced her skepticism about NATO’s repeated attempts to signal to Russia that the bloc now supposedly owns the Baltic Sea, noting that NATO’s newest additions, as well as the Baltic States, lack sizeable naval forces.