There's a cable planned to be laid out between Cyprus and mainland Europe to connect electricity grids, project is called East Mediterranean Interconnect. It's next step would be connection between Cyprus and Israel. Turkey not very happy about it at the moment according to https://greekcitytimes.com/2025/02/03/new-turkish-power-play...
Does that mean they have cables physically connecting their AC grids to the European AC grid? How many megawatts can those cables transfer? Which direction is the transfer going to be? Will they be buying electricity from Europe or selling electricity to Europe?
> All electricity interconnections with Russia and Belarus have been permanently disconnected.
> Does that mean they have cables physically connecting their AC grids to the European AC grid?
Yes, in the Suwalki Gap (border between Poland and Lithuania). Until this point, the connections were HVDC including to Sweden and Finland (across the Baltic Sea).
> Will they be buying electricity from Europe or selling electricity to Europe?
They already participate in the EU electricity market (through the HVDC lines), some hours buying cheap power from clean sources, sometimes selling expensive non-renewable power.
Note that Finland and Sweden aren't on the European Continental grid, but the Scandinavian grid, which has its border within Denmark. Thiis means there's now an additional route for Finland to sell power even further south.
Do you happen to have a link to a news item saying something changes for Finland? You are the first one I see mentioning this - I suppose because the HVDC lines were already there.
So much of this war backfired for Putin. Expanded the NATO border across Russia’s northern border, ended electric revenue in the Baltics, ended NordStream, ended gas supply across Ukraine, dependence on China & India for oil markets (Xi gets to dictate terms now), destruction of entire military equipment and mothballed reserves, and the embarrassment of relying on DPRK for manpower, exit of Western businesses, frozen and sold assets stored in western banks
1. no ability to sell electricity to baltics
2. no ability to disrupt baltic grid
3. managed to island russian enclave of koingsberg, giving control of its energy supply to the baltics (they could now cut off its gas)
This assumes Putin cares about all that.
Political scientists who study authoritarian regimes are pretty sure the only thing Putin cares about is keeping power. For that, poor population alienated from the world is exactly what is needed.
I disagree with the theory but even if, It won’t be irrelevant, and can/will continue without US if needed. Either way, Russia is too weak to invade another sovereign nation for the next four years
