VILNIUS, Feb 9 (Reuters) - Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania

said on Sunday they had successfully synchronised their

electricity systems to the European continental power grid, one

day after severing decades-old energy ties to Russia and

Belarus.

Planned for many years, the complex switch away from the

grid of their former Soviet imperial overlord is designed to

integrate the three Baltic nations more closely with the

European Union and to boost the region's energy security.

"We did it!," Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics said in a

post on social media X.

After disconnecting on Saturday from the IPS/UPS network,

established by the Soviet Union in the 1950s and now run by

Russia, the Baltic nations cut cross-border high-voltage

transmission lines in eastern Latvia, some 100 metres from the

Russian border, handing out pieces of chopped wire to

enthusiastic bystanders as keepsakes.

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, herself an Estonian,

earlier this week called the switch "a victory for freedom and

European unity".

The Baltic Sea region is on high alert after power cable,

telecom links and gas pipeline outages between the Baltics and

Sweden or Finland. All were believed to have been caused by

ships dragging anchors along the seabed following Russia's

invasion of Ukraine. Russia has denied any involvement.

Poland and the Baltics deployed navy assets, elite police

units and helicopters after an undersea power link from Finland

to Estonia was damaged in December, while Lithuania's military

began drills to protect the overland connection to Poland.

Analysts say more damage to links could push power prices in

the Baltics to levels not seen since the invasion of Ukraine,

when energy prices soared.

The IPS/UPS grid was the final remaining link to Russia for

the three countries, which re-emerged as independent nations in

the early 1990s at the fall of the Soviet Union, and joined the

European Union and NATO in 2004.

The three staunch supporters of Kyiv stopped purchases of

power from Russia following Moscow's invasion of Ukraine in

2022, but have relied on the Russian grid to control frequencies

and stabilise networks to avoid outages.