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Lithuania plans to build 45-km fence along border with Russia

"It will be a 2.5-meter-high wire fence equipped with electronic control devices," Lithuania’s border chief Renatas Pozela said

VILNIUS, January 15. /TASS/. Lithuania plans to build a 45-kilometer fence along the border with Russia’s westernmost Kaliningrad region, Lithuania’s border chief said on Sunday.

"The length of the most problem-plagued section of the border with the Kaliningrad region is 130 kilometers. It is planned to build 45-kilometer fencing at its land sections," Renatas Pozela, the head of Lithuania’s State Border Guard Service, told national television.

He said the measure is meant to improve protection of the state border of Lithuania and hence the European Union’s outer borders.

"It will be a 2.5-meter-high wire fence equipped with electronic control devices," Pozela said.

A sum of 3.6 million euro is provided in Lithuania’s 2017 state budget to fund the construction of such fencing. Lithuania’s authorities say the construction of this fence is meant to protect the country’s economic interests and enhance its security.

The length of the Lithuanian-Russian border [Lithuania borders Russia’s Kaliningrad region] is 294.4 kilometers, including 253.7 kilometers of land and inland water bodies, 18.5 kilometers of the Curonian lagoon, and 22.2 kilometers of the Baltic Sea.

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