Patrushev said Russia is preparing countermeasures because of Western actions in the Baltic Sea

Russia is preparing countermeasures in response to the actions of the United Kingdom, which has made attempts to impose on Europe the possibility of arresting Russian ships in the Baltic Sea because of alleged threats to nature and marine infrastructure. Nikolai Patrushev, Russian presidential aide and chairman of the Russian Maritime Board, said on February 18.

"The West has been looking for reasons to force Russia out of the Baltic for a long time, but having failed to find them, it decided to invent motives for essentially pirate seizures of our ships. Of course, Russia is carefully monitoring these actions of unfriendly countries and is preparing countermeasures," Patrushev said in an interview with aif.

According to him, the UK together with other NATO countries are trying to turn the Black and Baltic Seas into "internal waters of the alliance."

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Earlier, on February 6, Patrushev said that NATO is trying to block Russia in the Baltic Sea, as well as paralyze the work of ports in the Leningrad and Kaliningrad regions. According to Patrushev, such a policy negatively affects the reliability and safety of cargo and passenger transportation, in addition, it destroys the global system of maritime commercial shipping.