Estonia starts installing barbed wire on border with Russia due to migration crisis in Belarus
Not a lot of barbed wire is needed, as most of the border runs along rivers and lakes. The wire is now needed for only 40 kilometers.
On November 20, Estonia started installing a land border with Russia. In the northeast, near Narva and on the banks of the river Pivza in the south-east, Estonia began to build a temporary barrier, reported Interfax.
Barbed wire is used to reinforce a total of about 40 km of the border in the former Narva riverbed, where “the risk of illegal crossing is the greatest.” The 1,700 reservists of the Defense Forces have been called in for the work. Airplanes and drones were banned from flying in the areas bordering Russia until November 26 due to the construction work.
According to Egert Belichev, deputy director-general of the Estonian Police and Border Guard Department, “currently, migration pressure in Estonia is not increasing,” but if the situation changes, the temporary fence should help prevent mass illegal border crossing. The work is being done at an accelerated pace due to the migration crisis on the borders of Belarus with the European Union (and there is actually no protection of the border between Belarus and Russia).
Most of the Estonian-Russian border runs along the Narva River and along the lake, which is called Chudsky in Russian and Peipsi in Estonian. The land border is only 135 kilometers long, and most of it goes through harsh terrain. Estonia believes that it is necessary to create border infrastructure along the 115 kilometers of the border, erecting barbed wire fences in the section of 39.5 kilometers in the nearest future (another 25 kilometers are ready). Estonia intends to complete the 2.5-meter-high barbed-wire fence along the 90-kilometer portion of its border by 2026.
In summer, Estonia helped Lithuania with barbed wire. Lithuania had run out of its own wire used to strengthen the border with Belarus.
