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>Within the EU they are on home turf, with existing rail and road infrastructure

Baltic countries are better connected to Russia and Belarus via rail, road, electricity grid, etc than to the rest of the EU.

EU was reluctant to fund infrastructure projects to change that, e.g. the railway from Poland through all the three Baltic capitals

EU grants Baltic grids 720 mln euros to unplug from Russia

That's why I used the past tense. EU investment beefed up over the last few years. Rail Baltica is still underfinanced though [1].

And the main point stands. Baltic countries were part of USSR for 46 years from 1945 until 1991. EU had 30 years to fix the problem but it did not.