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Three border incidents on NATO and EU edges
Summary
A look back at how events on the Polish, Estonian and Baltic Sea frontiers converged in the last week of May 2024.
What did the eastern edge of the European Union and NATO look like on 28 May 2024? Three separate reports, spread over six days, pointed to pressure along the frontier with Russia and Belarus.
Poland: an injured soldier
On 28 May 2024, a Polish Border Guard soldier was seriously injured in an incident amid a surge in migrants trying to cross the EU border from Belarus. The report placed the episode within the wider Belarus–European Union border crisis.
Estonia: markers removed
Five days earlier, on 23 May, Russia removed the markers signalling the border with Estonia on the Narva River. The European Union protested.
The Baltic Sea: a proposal withdrawn
On 22 May, the Russian Ministry of Defence proposed to adjust Russia's maritime border in the Baltic Sea unilaterally. Baltic members of NATO, including Finland and Lithuania, voiced concern. The ministry later retracted the proposal.
What the pattern shows
The three reports concern different places and different actors: a land border with Belarus, a river boundary with Estonia and a maritime line in the Baltic. The reactions also differed. The Baltic Sea proposal was withdrawn after the concern expressed by NATO members, while the EU lodged a protest over the Narva markers. The Polish incident, by contrast, involved an injured soldier at a border under migratory pressure.
Taken together, they show that in the last week of May 2024 the border security of EU and NATO members was being tested in several places at once.
