Kaliningrad a Pawn in the Ukraine War

 By Henry Srebrnik, [Saint John, N.B.] Telegraph-Journal

The Russian oblast, or province, of Kaliningrad has become is a pawn in the proxy war between Moscow and the European Union.

It is an exclave, a portion of a state that is geographically separated from the main part by the surrounding territory of one or more nations.

Situated on the southern coast of the Baltic Sea, it spans an area of 15,000 square kilometres and has a population of roughly a million. It is sandwiched between Lithuania and Poland, both of which are EU and NATO members. It receives much of its supplies via routes that pass through Lithuania and Belarus.

Kaliningrad, then know as Konigsberg, was part of Germany until the Red Army seized control of it from the Nazis in 1945 and it was ceded to the Soviet Union after the war.

 It remained part of the Russian Federation when the three Baltic states – Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania – as well as Belarus became sovereign countries in 1991. Though isolated, that didn’t matter that much when relations with Russia were fairly good.

Kaliningrad is strategically and militarily important. The Russian Baltic Sea Fleet is headquartered there – it is the only port that doesn’t freeze over in winter, unlike the ones closer to St. Petersburg. Its radar systems provide surveillance of central Europe.

As well, the Kremlin has placed nuclear weapons in the exclave. In May Russia carried out simulated nuclear missile strikes, with “electronic launches” of Iskander mobile ballistic missile systems, near its borders with Lithuania and Poland.

Should Finland and Sweden join NATO, its importance to Moscow will only increase, because the Baltic Sea would essentially become a NATO “lake,” with only Russia as a non-NATO country there.

But Kaliningrad also creates Western vulnerability. There is a sliver of territory along the border between Poland and Lithuania called the Suwalki Gap, with Russian ally Belarus on one side and Kaliningrad on the other.

The area has long been viewed as the Achilles’ heel of NATO’s eastern defences, owing to the relative ease with which Russia could seize it by launching a pincer assault between Kaliningrad in the northwest and its client state, Belarus, in the southeast, cutting off the three Baltic states from the rest of NATO territory.

There are also large numbers of ethnic Russians in the Baltic region. In both Latvia and Estonia, they comprise about one quarter of each country’s population. Russian President Vladimir Putin has mentioned Narva, right across the border in Estonia, where ethnic Russians comprise almost 90 per cent of the city, as really part of Russia. And that, of course, wakens all sorts of concerns.

So the Baltic states, always fearful of Moscow, are among Ukraine’s loudest supporters. On June 17, Lithuanian state rail operator LTG began to bar the transit through the country of Kaliningrad-bound goods sanctioned by the EU, including coal, metals and construction materials.

Only flows of passengers and cargo not subject to EU sanctions would continue. According to Kaliningrad Governor Anton Alikhanov, around half the items imported by his region would be affected.

The Kremlin called the move “unprecedented and illegal” and Russian security council secretary Nikolai Patrushev on June 17 warned it would have a “serious negative impact on the population of Lithuania.”

Germany also was unhappy. Berlin reportedly viewed the transit being blocked by Vilnius as “transport from Russia to Russia,” which should be allowed. The German magazine Der Spiegel suggested that Olaf Scholz’s government also worried that Moscow could use force to secure a land corridor to Kaliningrad by blocking the Suwalki Gap.

Perhaps the Russian threat worked, because on July 13 the EU said the transit ban only affected road, not rail, transit, so Lithuania should allow Russia to ship concrete, wood and alcohol across EU territory to Kaliningrad. Lithuanian Railways resumed transporting goods to the exclave on July 22.

Meanwhile, Russia had begun closing down Lithuanian cultural institutions in the oblast. The children's folklore ensemble Malunėlis, which has been active in Kaliningrad for 10 years, was banned from representing the region at a Russian Folk Festival. The Lithuanian Language Teachers’ Association was also shut. The ripple effects of the war extend across Europe.