Context: In early September, construction officially began on the Baltic Defense Line on Latvia’s eastern border. The line is a system of fortifications being built jointly by the Baltic States and Poland in case of a potential Russian attack. On the Latvian section, work has begun on digging anti-tank trenches with a total length of 27 km and installing concrete “dragon’s teeth.” The work is scheduled to be completed by fall 2027.
On September 9, Maksim Kharyn, the host of Belarusian Radio’s First National Channel program Ekspertnyi Klub. Politicheskoe Radio Show, said that each concrete “dragon’s tooth” costs the Baltic governments €1,000.
“The details have come to light. One dragon’s tooth — have you seen what this concrete ‘truffle’ looks like? It’s just a chunk of concrete. How many bags of cement could it possibly take? Three, just to fill that little thing? One of these Rubik’s Cubes costs €1,000. €1,000! Can you imagine?”
We can verify this figure using Latvia’s public procurement data. The registry contains the results of the Ministry of Defense’s “dragon’s teeth” procurement tender. Although it does not specify the winning bid price submitted by the Latvian company Salenieku Bloks, all participants offered prices ranging from €249 to €258 per unit. This means the winning bid also falls within this range. The retail price is also close to these amounts. On the Salenieku Bloks website, a 1.3-meter-tall “dragon’s tooth” costs from €250 per unit.
We could not find any documentation of the Lithuanian government’s procurement of such barriers. However, their cost had become a subject of controversy a year earlier. The Ministry of Defense was accused of paying €3,000 from the budget for a single concrete pyramid. The ministry denied this. 15min reported that the figure 3,000 referred to the number of barriers under the contract, not the price of a single unit. A single “dragon’s tooth” cost €254, excluding VAT, under one contract and €213, excluding VAT, under another.
Thus, available data on procurements in Latvia and Lithuania suggest a price of around €250 per “dragon’s tooth,” rather than €1,000. The amount Maksim Kharyn cites is about four times higher.
