Russia’s Putin to gain control of Part of ‘NATO Lake’- Sweden

Sweden’s top military has warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin plans to seize control of the Baltic Sea, which has been referred to as a “NATO lake.”

This comes after Russia moved to redraw its maritime borders with Finland and Lithuania.

Micael Byden, the Supreme Commander of the Swedish Armed Forces, made the remarks in response to a Russian Defense Ministry document that was allegedly leaked online and revealed Moscow’s plans for the Baltic region.

Tensions in the region are high because of Finland and Sweden’s recent NATO membership, and Moscow is being held accountable for GPS jamming.

Byden expressed his confidence that Putin has “both eyes on Gotland,” the strategically significant Swedish island, to the German network RND.

According to him, “Putin’s goal is to gain control of the Baltic Sea,” he said. “Who controls Gotland controls the Baltic Sea.”

Gotland, around 200 miles north of the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, is Sweden’s largest island and its seizure by Moscow could threaten NATO countries from the sea.

This could end “peace and stability in the Nordic and Baltic regions,” Byden said, “the Baltic Sea should not turn into Putin’s playground.”

The document, dated May 21, suggests Moscow wants to declare part of the waters in the eastern part of the Gulf of Finland on its border with Lithuania and the area near the towns of Baltiysk and Zelenogradsk in the Kaliningrad region as internal waters.

Russia claims that previous geographic coordinates were registered relying on small-scale marine navigation maps based on 20th-century research that do not properly reflect the region’s maritime borders.

But Finnish Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen posted on X, formerly Twitter, that the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea contains provisions on the definition of maritime zones of coastal states and that “we assume that Russia, as a party to the Convention, will act accordingly.”