The Softened Hard Lithuanian-Russian Border - European Foreign Affairs Review View The Softened Hard Lithuanian-Russian Border by - European Foreign Affairs Review The Softened Hard Lithuanian-Russian Border 29 SI The aim of this article is to evaluate the effect of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on the Lithuanian-Russian borderland. Using the framework of securitization with insights from geopolitics, it claims that one can observe three developments. First, Lithuania tried to pursue with even greater rigor a policy of hardening the Russian-Lithuanian border and fencing away from the Kaliningrad district. Nevertheless, these actions faced several obstacles. The European Commission, together with Lithuania’s main allies, imposed such an interpretation of EU sanctions against Russia that left the Lithuanian-Russian border more open than Vilnius had wished for. This external undermining of the hardening of border is the second development. Thirdly, the Lithuanian-Russian border was undermined internally. Because the Lithuanian- Belarusian border also has been recognized as a Lithuanian-Russian border by political decision makers, the Lithuanian-Russian borderland expanded, but Lithuania lacked the institutional capacities and faced an internal backlash to enforce a rigid regime on the frontier.
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