Danish Straits
The three passages between the North and Baltic Seas that gate Russian and Baltic trade.
Overview
The Oresund between Denmark and Sweden, the Great Belt, the main deep-water route, and the Little Belt connect the Baltic to the world. Before sanctions rerouted flows, Russian Baltic terminals, Primorsk, Ust-Luga and Gdansk-area ports, moved millions of barrels of crude through them yearly. Denmark toll the Oresund from 1429 to 1857, one of history's most lucrative chokepoint rents. Today the straits carry Baltic container feeders, ferries and bulk traffic beneath the Great Belt fixed link, and port state inspections of aging tankers, the so-called shadow fleet, keep the strait in the news.
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