Russia Is Threatening to Expand Its Borders Again—This Time in the Baltic Sea

Russia’s Defense Ministry has unilaterally moved to revise the borders of Russian territorial waters in the Baltic Sea, drafting a government decree on the expansion without even bothering to notify NATO members Finland and Lithuania.

In reaction to the surprised responses of the Baltic Sea states, the Kremlin on Wednesday issued a statement that seems bound only to make matters worse. Insisting that there’s “nothing political” about the proposed border change, Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in the same breath that the “political situation” has in fact “changed significantly” since the borders were drawn.

“You see how tensions are escalating, what the level of confrontation is, especially in the Baltic region. This requires our agencies to take corresponding steps to ensure security,” he told reporters, using language that sounds awfully similar to Putin’s oft-repeated claim that invading Ukraine was necessary for “security” against NATO.

Read more at The Daily Beast.