The fortress under siege opens a new front of tension. Kaliningrad, the piece of Russian land wedged in the middle of the NATO countries and strategic stronghold on the Baltic, for three days has returned to the center of the confrontation between the Kremlin and the West. In fact, Lithuania has decided to block the transfer by rail of a long list of goods subject to European sanctions. Since Friday, the authorities in Vilnius have banned the import and export of metals, building materials, coal and technological devices. According to rumors, half of the freight trains bound for Kaliningrad would have been stopped and this would have caused a rush to the stocks, forcing the half million inhabitants to storm the supermarkets.
The Lithuanian bloc
The governor Anton Alikhanov he tried to reassure the population, announcing that the Russian ferry fleet will guarantee supplies: “There are two ships in service, soon there will be seven”. But the affair has already been challenged by Moscow. The head of the Federation Council Commission for the Protection of Sovereignty, Andrey Klimov, he stated that either Brussels “will correct the situation regarding the blockade of Kaliningrad, or Russia will have a free hand to resolve the transit issue by any means”. And she threatened: “This is a direct aggression against Russia”, which could force Moscow to “resort to self-defense”. To then accuse NATO of having inspired Lithuania’s decision. On the same line, the spokesman for the Kremlin Dmitry Peskov: “It is an illegal act. The situation is indeed very serious and requires a thorough analysis to prepare a response”.
The Foreign Minister Gabriel Landsbergis arriving at the EU summit this morning, he reaffirmed his country’s willingness to apply sanctions and to have acted after consulting with the Brussels Commission. “Russia wants to show what level of pressure it can exert on Europe. This is the time to testify our determination.” And Landsbergis repeated his country’s line: “If we provide Ukraine with 90 per cent of the military aid it has requested, and not 10 per cent, the war will be closed quickly. The ports of the Black Sea? blockade we need deterrence, if we deliver anti-ship weapons to Kiev it will be guaranteed that the Russians cannot stop the transfer of grain “.
Kaliningrad, the former Prussian capital is the new Russian supermissile fortress
by Gianluca Di Feo
A history marked by sieges
The story of Kaliningrad it has always been marked by sieges. The former Konigsberg, manor of the Teutonic knights and then first the capital of Prussia, lived the last one in 1945: after the occupation of the Red Army there was the annexation to Moscow and the “russification” of the population, which resisted the collapse of the USSR and all changes in world maps. Over the past decade, Putin has transformed the enclave into a missile base, which dominates access to Baltic routes and can hit Berlin, Stockholm, Helsinki, Warsaw, Copenhagen, Riga and Vilnius with nuclear warheads. Prior to the invasion of Ukraine, the garrison was further enhanced with a fighter flock armed with Kinzhal hypersonic bombs and other attack submarines. And the Kremlin intends to make its army weigh against the West.
“Nuclear simulation”, the new Moscow challenge that alarms the West: tests with ‘electronic launch’ of missiles from Kaliningrad
by our correspondent Rosalba Castelletti
The Russian provocation
Last Friday in the Baltic, two Russian military ships entered the territorial waters of Denmark, presenting themselves in front of a Danish island. The initiative was read by some analysts as a retaliation against the deployment in Ukraine of Harpoon anti-ship missiles donated by Copenhagen to Kiev, which allegedly sank a large Russian tug off Serpent Island. A few hours later, two patrol boats of the Black Sea Fleet approached a Romanian oil platform, remaining within range of their weapons for hours.
Of the many points of friction between NATO and Moscow, however, Kaliningrad is the one of greatest concern. In fact, it is Russian territory: a situation that justifies, in the eyes of Moscow hawks such as Andrey Klimov – a senator of Putin’s Party and legislative director of the annexation of Crimea -, the use of “self-defense”: a threat that may include the use of nuclear weapons.