Goodbye, Lenin: The Baltics Disconnect from Soviet-era Power Grid

Executive Summary:

• The Baltic states recently marked a major milestone by disconnecting from the Soviet-era electricity system and synchronizing with the continental European grid.
• The disconnect from the Moscow-controlled system was marked by Russian influence operations and incidents related to critical infrastructure in the Baltic Sea.
• The move marks a “second independence” for the Baltics, long abused by the Kremlin’s systematic use of energy pricing and supply disruptions to exert political pressure.

The Baltic states officially disconnected their electricity grid from Russia on Saturday, February 8, as officials shut down the Soviet-era grid’s transmission lines to join with the rest of Europe on Sunday (LRV.lt, February 9). With European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen by his side, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda received the awaited call confirming the country’s successful synchronization with the Continental Europe Synchronous Area (CESA). Nausėda said smiling, “Goodbye, Russia. Goodbye, Lenin” (Delfi.lt, February 10).

His remark conveyed the deeply political undertones of the move. After more than 18 years of preparations, EUR €1.6 billion ($1.69 billion) in investment, and 650 kilometers of transmission lines later, Lithuania as well as Estonia and Latvia are now firmly part of Europe’s energy orbit (BNS, February 10). For 65 years, the Baltic states have depended on the Soviet-era Belarus, Russia, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania (BRELL, БРЭЛЛ) energy ring, where Moscow maintained the 50 Hertz frequency (BNS, February 10).

Lithuania had previously halted all imports of gas, oil, and electricity from Russia following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 (LRT.lt, May 11, 2022). The BRELL infrastructure, however, remained a constant reminder of the region’s old dependencies. After the synchronization with CESA, the lines connecting the Baltics with Russia and Belarus could finally be dismantled (LRT.lt, February 8).

One Lithuanian political commentator, drawing a sarcastic parallel to Soviet nostalgia, quipped that “things were better under the old electricity” (Facebook.com/paulius.gritenas, February 8). The remark captured a broader sentiment that the shift was not just purely technical but also cultural. The official celebration in Vilnius was unmistakably European, particularly with its dazzling light display that evoked comparisons to a Eurovision performance or a Kraftwerk concert (X.com/ianbremmer, February 10).

Vigilance remained high even though the synchronization proceeded without real issues. Lithuania’s Public Security Service guarded key energy facilities and the LitPol Link power interconnection with Poland, the gateway through which the Baltic grids joined CESA (LRT.lt, January 15).  The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) had already increased patrols in the Baltic Sea due to an abnormally high number of incidents (11 in total since October 2023) involving damage to communication and power cables (LRT.lt, January 14; see EDM, February 5). Over Christmas, the EstLink 2 cable, one of the options Estonia had considered for synchronizing with the European grid, was damaged in a suspected sabotage attempt, reportedly by a vessel from Russia’s “shadow fleet” of tankers (LRT.lt, January 15). Such attacks serve as a stark reminder of how vulnerable critical energy infrastructure remains.

 A vulnerability for Moscow as the Baltics desynchronize is ensuring energy security of the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. Located between Lithuania and Poland, Kaliningrad is dependent on gas supplies that are transmitted via Lithuania (Euractiv, February 5; bne IntelliNews, February 10). In preparation for the desynchronization, Kaliningrad, now essentially an “energy island,” had built new coal and gas stations for extra capacity and isolated its network (LRT.lt, February 6).

The run-up to the BRELL desynchronization also featured a Russian influence campaign aimed at discrediting the Baltic’s decision as reckless, costly, and potentially disastrous. Phrases such as “energy catastrophe” or “darkness and chaos” were disseminated by pro-Kremlin commentators (LRT.lt, February 8). Social media bots in Estonia attempted to mislead the public by resharing a false notice of anticipated power outages, urging residents to stock up on batteries and non-perishable goods (LRT.lt, January 23). In Lithuania, a Russia-sympathetic member of parliament shared a deceptive photo suggesting a petrol station outage (LRT.lt, February 7).

Maria Zakharova, spokesperson for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, accused the Baltics of continuing the “destruction of countries and peoples that had the potential to prosper.” (LRT.lt, February 10). “Without electricity, infrastructure, without production, they won’t be able to produce screwdrivers. A return to the Stone Age,” echoed one pro-Russian commentator (LRT.lt, February 7).

Ultimately, the hyped catastrophe proved decidedly uneventful for consumers. The lights stayed on as usual. Instead, the real significance, which lay well beyond the absence of outages, was that the Baltics had finally cast off their Soviet-era energy shackles.

Energy and geopolitics may seem like distant matters to some—not so for countries locked within the precarious region of Central and Eastern Europe. The possibility of coercion and supply interruptions loomed large over the Baltic energy markets since their independence. Transneft suspended oil deliveries to Lithuania at least nine times between 1998 and 2000 in an attempt to thwart the sale of Lithuania’s refinery, pipeline, and port facility to Williams, an American energy company (Hamilton, 2008, pp. 121–122). Between 2000 and 2006, Russia halted energy exports on at least 40 different occasions (Larsson, 2006, p. 185). In 2012, Lithuania was subjected to the highest natural gas prices in Europe,  twice those of Germany after Vilnius moved to break up Gazprom’s monopoly (LRT.lt, October 29, 2019). After global sanctions were placed on Russian energy, threats of energy shortages have been explicitly aimed at Western countries. Gazprom released a chilling two-minute video showing workers turning off supplies and sending the gas pressure gauge to zero as icy clouds enshroud Berlin, Paris, London, and Brussels to the ominous lyrics of Yuri Vizbor’s “Winter will be Long” (А зима будет большая; A zima budyet bol’shaya) (Youtube.com/@TheUdaffka, September 5, 2022).

The link between energy dependency and national security has long seemed self-evident in Vilnius. Lithuania attempted to leverage the notorious 2005 “broken” Druzhba (Дружба, druzhba) pipeline incident to petition NATO allies to recognize the strategic dimension of energy infrastructure, but initial efforts were challenging (Baran, December 2006, pp. 33-34). 

Linas Linkevičius, Lithuania’s Permanent Representative to NATO in 2005, recalled traveling to the Joint Force Command in Norfolk to persuade the military leadership that energy security should be included in the NATO resilience agenda (Author’s Interview with Linkevičius, September 2022). The risks associated with hydrocarbon supply, however, were initially dismissed as “economic matters” or “commercial disputes” (Author’s Interview with Linkevičius, September 2022).

Such skepticism made Lithuania’s decision to build a liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal in the early 2010s—initially derided as wasteful— even more foresightful. It enabled the country to halt all Russian energy imports and emboldened the Baltic states to decouple from the Soviet-era electrical grid. Von der Leyen praised these achievements at the ceremony marking the grid synchronization, observing that “once again, the Baltic states lead by example” (LRT.lt, February 10).

Lenin’s famous recipe for modernity—“Soviet power plus electrification”—once symbolised Moscow’s dominance. Entire generations were raised on the promise of a “brighter tomorrow” (Banerjee, Anindita. “Electric Origins: From Modernist Myth to Bolshevik Utopia” in L’ère électrique. The Electric Age, edited by Olivier Asselin, Silvestra Mariniello, and Andrea Oberhuber. 2011.) Now, the Baltics can confidently declare that the lights shine just as brightly—if not brighter—without relics of the past.