By Jim Geraghty
Friday, May 24, 2024
If you search the
White House website for the word “Estonia” — there’s no option to sort
the search returns by date. Thanks a lot, fellas — it appears the last time
that President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, or any other senior Biden
official referred to Estonia was at the Gridiron Club Dinner on March 16. That
night, Biden said, “Joining us tonight is the prime minister of Estonia and the
Ukrainian ambassador to the United States. I say — (applause) — I say to Putin
and told him in person we will not — we will not bow down. They will not bow
down, and I will not bow down. Period.” (I presume the “they” Biden referred to
was Ukraine and our NATO allies like Estonia, but as usual, he’s less than
clear.)
Why would I be looking for any White House statement
about Estonia? Because Russian border guards are removing Estonia’s
border-marker buoys from the Narva River, which separates the NATO member
country from Russia. A statement from the Estonian Police and Border Guard:
On the night of 23 May, the
Russian border guard removed the buoys placed in Estonian waters of the Narva
River, which are used to mark the shipping routes.
According to Eerik Purgel, head
of the Border Guard Bureau of the East Prefecture, Estonia and Russia install
buoys in the Narva River every spring, marking the shipping routes. “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. We
decided to release the floating marks into the water for the summer season
according to the 2022 agreement, because they are necessary to avoid
navigational errors, so that our fishermen and other hobbyists do not
accidentally wander into Russian waters,” Purgel said.
This year, Russia announced that
they would not agree with the locations of about half of the planned 250
floating marks. Estonia installed light buoys in Estonian waters on the basis
of the State Borders Act and the locations of buoys agreed between border
representations in 2022. The first 50 buoys were installed in the Narva River
on 13 May. At 3 p.m. on Thursday night, border guards detected that the border
guards of the Russian Federation had begun to remove floating marks and 24
buoys were taken out during the night, some of which were among the marks at
issue.
The Police and Border Guard Board
will contact the Russian Border Guard and request clarifications on the removal
of the buoys and return of buoys. The Police and Border Guard Board expects
evidence from Russia that the position of the shipping route agreed so far has
changed and, if they are not presented, we will continue to install buoys,”
Purgel said.
The buoys have been installed in
the river for decades for the navigation season, and they are necessary to
avoid navigation errors.
“Russia uses border issues as a
means to create fear and anxiety,” Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas said at
a press conference in Tallinn Thursday. “We will approach this incident
soberly, in a balanced way, if needed also in communication with partners and
allies.”
This isn’t just a bunch of buoys. This is where NATO
meets Russia, the dividing line between East and West, the geopolitical
successor to the Berlin Wall. The “Russian border
guard” is a branch of the Federal Security Service or FSB, which is the
successor to the old KGB. And it’s not reasonable to conclude that the Russian
government just forgot to pick up the phone and call the Estonians. This was a
deliberate provocation, an assertion that Russia can alter the border line on
the river at will, and that Estonia and NATO will be reluctant to respond in
any significant way, lest that be deemed “provocative.”
Notice that this comes the same week that the Russian Defense Ministry issued a proposal to “redraw the
borders changing its maritime borders with Finland and
Lithuania
in the Baltic Sea from January 2025. The redefined coordinates would see Moscow
declaring Finnish and Lithuanian areas of the sea as Russian.” After a day, the
proposal was removed from the Russian government’s website.
The Lithuanian foreign minister, Gabrielius
Landsbergis, declared on Twitter, “Another Russian hybrid operation is
underway, this time attempting to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt about
their intentions in the Baltic Sea. This is an obvious escalation against NATO
and the EU, and must be met with an appropriately firm response.”
This is all separate from the fact that Russia is jamming GPS signals over the Baltic region and
endangering passenger airliners.
These are “salami tactics,” as they discussed in that
legendary Yes, Prime Minister episode. The Russians are unlikely to
just declare war one day and come charging across the border. They’ll try to
take territory, slice by slice — with each small step seeming too
inconsequential to spur a full-scale NATO response. By the time the West
realizes that it’s been conceding territory, inch by inch, it will be too late,
and the Russians will have already gained a significant advantage.
It was an entire two days ago that Kallas was warning
that the “shadow war” between NATO and Russia is already underway.
And just three weeks ago, enough incidents — arrests of suspected spies and
saboteurs, mysterious fires, etc. — added up to spur NATO to issue a collective statement warning Russia to knock off
the “malign activities”:
NATO Allies are deeply concerned
about recent malign activities on Allied territory, including those resulting
in the investigation and charging of multiple individuals in connection with
hostile state activity affecting Czechia, Estonia, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania,
Poland, and the United Kingdom.
These incidents are part of an
intensifying campaign of activities which Russia continues to carry out across
the Euro-Atlantic area, including on Alliance territory and through proxies.
This includes sabotage, acts of violence, cyber and electronic interference,
disinformation campaigns, and other hybrid operations. NATO Allies express
their deep concern over Russia’s hybrid actions, which constitute a threat to
Allied security.
We support and stand in
solidarity with the affected Allies. We will act individually and collectively
to address these actions and will continue to coordinate closely. We will
continue to boost our resilience and to apply and enhance the tools at our disposal
to counter and contest Russian hybrid actions and will ensure that the Alliance
and Allies are prepared to deter and defend against hybrid actions or attacks.
We condemn Russia’s behaviour,
and we call on Russia to uphold its international obligations, as Allies do
theirs. Russia’s actions will not deter Allies from continuing to support
Ukraine.
The Estonian border buoys were removed around 3 a.m. local
time Thursday, which is about 8 p.m. Wednesday in Washington, D.C. It
is Friday morning.
If anyone in the U.S. government has any thoughts about
Russian border guards removing the border-marking buoys of a NATO ally, they
are awfully quiet about it. As of this writing, shortly before 8 a.m. Friday,
no statement on the buoys’ removal has been issued by the White House, the Pentagon, or the State
Department. And as far as I can tell, our NATO allies have commented upon
the Russian proposal to expand its territorial waters in the Baltics, but there
hasn’t been any statement from any U.S. official.
I notice this non-reaction to Russian provocations comes
shortly after a report from Jennifer Jacobs, the White House correspondent for
Bloomberg News, that Biden and Harris are skipping a big European conference on
helping Ukraine to attend a big campaign fundraiser in Hollywood:
President Joe Biden will likely
miss a Ukraine summit next month because it conflicts with a campaign
fundraiser in California he’s set to attend alongside George Clooney, Julia
Roberts and other stars.
Switzerland scheduled the
conference for June 15-16, after a meeting of the Group of Seven in Italy.
Several G-7 leaders plan to join but neither Biden nor Vice President Kamala
Harris are scheduled to be there, according to people familiar with the matter
who asked not to be named discussing private deliberations. President Vladimir
Putin wasn’t invited and leaders from other nations are also planning to skip.
Biden is scheduled to fly from
the G-7 meeting in southern Italy to Los Angeles for the June 15 fundraiser.
Along with Clooney and Roberts, former President Barack Obama and late-night TV
host Jimmy Kimmel are set to join him. . . .
About 70 countries will take part
in the summit at some level, including leaders such as Canadian Prime Minister
Justin Trudeau and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, while Japanese Premier Fumio
Kishida is likely to be there too.
Got that? Biden can’t make the big European conference on
the Ukraine war because he’s already booked with Julia Roberts and Jimmy
Kimmel.
Really? We couldn’t even send Harris?
We have an 81-year-old president who gets wiped out for
at least a day after any foreign trip. I suppose we should be thankful that our
geriatric commander in chief isn’t skipping the G-7 Summit. He can’t remember
what inflation was when he took office, he claims to have just talked to the
late Helmut Kohl and Francois Mitterand, keeps saying
“Ukraine” when he means “Gaza,” meant “recession” but said “pandemic,” claimed millions of
families saved $800,000 per year under the Affordable Care Act . . . it just
goes on and on.
Biden’s not up to the job, and he hasn’t been up to the
job for a while, and all the smoke and mirrors and campaign spending and
Hollywood celebrities in the world can’t hide that.
Today, President Biden and the first lady are scheduled
to leave for the Memorial Day weekend in Delaware
at 11:40 a.m. Eastern.
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