Two regional moves ahead of 10 January 2025

What did the days leading up to 10 January 2025 show about pressure on Ukraine's neighbours? Two developments, reported on 7 and 8 January, pointed to very different kinds of strain.

On 8 January, Lithuanian prime minister Gintautas Paluckas deployed the police to secure the country's electricity link with Poland. The step responded to reported attempts to disrupt the planned decoupling of the Baltic states' power systems from the grid shared with Belarus and Russia. The decoupling was still planned at that point, and the link with Poland was the infrastructure the police were sent to protect.

On 7 January, the U.S. Treasury imposed sanctions on Hungarian cabinet minister Antal Rogán for alleged corruption. It accused him of using his position to secure financial benefits for himself and political allies. The measure was a matter of Hungary–United States relations.

Taken together, the two events involved different governments and different issues: energy security on the Baltic side, and alleged corruption in a Hungarian cabinet on the other. Each was reported in the days before 10 January 2025.