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Estonia plans to build fence along its eastern border with Russia 22808153.
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Defence & Security News - Estonia
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| Estonia plans to build fence along its eastern border with Russia | |||
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Estonia on Thursday said it would build a fence along its eastern border with Russia to safeguard its security and to protect the EU's passport-free Schengen zone. The Estonian Interior ministry spokesman Toomas Viks said construction would begin in 2018.
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"The aim of the construction is to cover the land border with 100 percent, around-the-clock technical surveillance to create ideal conditions for border guarding and to ensure the security of Estonia and the Schengen area," Toomas Viks told AFP.
The fence would be part of the project on completing the Estonian-Russian border installations. The project is estimated to cost a total of 71 million euros. According to Estonian authorities, the fence is necessary to reduce the number of border violations. This year alone, authorities have registered 43 violations on the land border with Russia. Length of Estonia’s land border with Russia is 135 km. In addition, there is 126 km of border on Lake Peipus and 76 km of border on Narva River. In addition, the Estonian Border Guard Board plans to install video cameras across the entire perimeter of the wall and set out patrol drones to detect threats. The announcement comes as regional tensions are running high over the crisis between Russia and Ukraine. The Baltic states have been rattled by Russia's actions in Ukraine, where pro-Moscow separatists have been fighting Kiev's forces since April 2014. Estonia, along with Latvia and Lithuania, emerged from nearly five decades of Soviet occupation in the early 1990s and joined NATO and the European Union in 2004 in a bid to boost their own security at a time of tension with Moscow. |
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