Latvia Follows Lithuania, Increases Security Around Critical Infrastructure

Latvia has increased its security at critical infrastructure sites after receiving intelligence that Russia may be planning an attack in the Baltic region, the country’s prime minister, Andris Kulbergs, has said.Kulbergs told Reuters in a July 16 interview that security had been increased at Incukalns, a large underground gas storage facility, and around a hydroelectric dam upstream from the Latvian capital, Riga.The prime minister said that as Russia is facing setbacks on the battlefield in its war with Ukraine, Moscow wants “a potential quick win, so the potential hybrid threat is larger than before.”“Anything is possible,” he said.The move followed Baltic and Polish leaders warning recently that Western intelligence agencies have said that Moscow could be planning attacks against infrastructure in the region, which borders Russia.Russia has denied that it was planning any kind of assault or provocation against any NATO members, calling the allegations “fearmongering.”Kulbergs said he had spoken with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte and requested that more air defense and allied troops be sent to the region.He became prime minister last month, after the previous government collapsed.His predecessor, Evika Silina, had resigned on May 14 over the country’s inability to protect its citizens from rogue Ukrainian drones that had entered Latvian airspace from Russia.Ukraine has blamed “Russian electronic warfare” for the incidents, saying that Russian forces were deliberately diverting Ukrainian drones from their targets.Lithuania Boosting Security The moves follow similar action by Lithuania, which this week said that it was boosting security around transport and energy sites as a precaution after receiving intelligence that Russia was planning attacks on critical infrastructure.“I cannot deny that we have such information and that we are talking about kinetic operations,” Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda told the BNS news agency on July 15.“Not large-scale, but … targeted kinetic operations, which, very likely, could be directed at critical infrastructure facilities.”He said that Lithuanian intelligence did not know precisely which targets would be struck or when, only that such operations were being planned.On July 15, Latvian President Edgards Rinkevics said that information from NATO members showed that Russia has already made attempts to conduct sabotage.“Information we are getting from Lithuanian, ⁠Latvian and other NATO ​states, from various agencies there, ​shows various attempts to do sabotage and to lower the security in our ​states,” Rinkevics said at ​a press conference in Vilnius alongside Nauseda.Rinkevics did not specify which countries had been the subject of such attempts.‘Fearmongering’The Kremlin has denied the allegations, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying of Nauseda’s remarks on July 15 at a press briefing: “This is another wave of fearmongering aimed at continuing to brainwash people and prepare the population for further militarization.”Peskov accused Lithuania, along with the other Baltic states, of using the fear of an alleged Russian threat to bring more NATO forces to the region.“To do this, they need to create an image of an enemy in another country, in this case ours, and use this pretext, as we say, to continue deploying NATO military infrastructure in all its forms across the Baltic states,” the spokesman said, according to Russia’s state-run news agency TASS.Reuters contributed to this report.