European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has warned Russia that the security and borders of EU member states are “untouchable.”
“I want this to be understood very clearly in Moscow," Juncker told the European Parliament in his first State of the Union address on September 9.
"The Baltics and Poland are very important members of the European Union and they should not think that we would not be there if in any way if their security and their borders were in danger," he added.
The war in Ukraine has plunged Moscow’s ties with the West to lows unseen since the Cold War.
Russian support for separatists in Ukraine, and its annexation of Crimea, have badly spooked Eastern European EU members such as Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, which fear Moscow wants to reassert its Cold War-era control over them.