Kaliningrad is that little tiny “country” with no name on the Baltic Sea coast, sandwiched between Lithuania and Poland.
Except, it’s not a country. It’s part of Russia. It’s known as the “exclave.” Politically, it’s just considered one of Russia’s oblasts (akin to American states, or Canadian provinces). It’s not a foreign territory that Russia holds sovereignty over, it is simply Russia. It’s part of Russia, even though it’s detached. Kind of like how Alaska is a full-blown US state even though it’s not connected to any other US states, and in fact looks like it should be part of Canada from a geographical perspective.
The story of how Russia came to own Kaliningrad is not super relevant for our purposes here, but briefly: it used to be owned by Germany way back when (it was called East Prussia). Once Germany was defeated in World War II, the Soviets annexed a large chunk of German territory, including Kaliningrad, along with basically everything in Europe east of Berlin.
During the Cold War, the Soviets booted out most of the ethnic Germans and replaced them with ethnic Russians. The major city, formerly called Konigsberg by the Germans, was renamed Kaliningrad.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, and the Baltic States got their independence (along with many other countries), Kaliningrad Oblast (the exclave) became severed from mainland Russia, and it’s been that way ever since 1991.
And so now what’s happening is the Lithuanians (members of NATO) have, almost undoubtedly at the behest of America, imposed a partial blockade of the exclave. The exclave has its own Baltic Sea port, but as far as land-based trade, it is completely reliant on the goodwill of Lithuania and Poland, two NATO members who viciously despise the Russians.
And now we’re seeing all this come to a head.
Russia has warned Lithuania of “serious” consequences after it banned the rail transfer of some goods to the Russian territory of Kaliningrad.
Russia “will certainly respond to such hostile actions,” senior security official Nikolai Patrushev said.
Lithuania says it is only following the EU sanctions imposed over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
Kaliningrad – a strategic region where Russia’s Baltic Fleet is headquartered – has no border with mainland Russia.
The region – where an estimated one million people live – relies heavily on imports of raw materials and spare parts from Russia and the EU.
Regional governor Anton Alikhanov said the ban would cover around 50% of the items that Kaliningrad imports.
So this is quite a significant development.
Russia is pissed, because this is a direct challenge to them. They will not allow themselves to be pushed around, and obviously the whole Russian government is on the highest of high alerts right now as they have the vast majority of their military balls deep in Ukraine.
Lithuania, for their part, insists they’re simply doing the EU’s bidding:
During a visit on Tuesday to Kaliningrad, Mr Patrushev said the blockade by Lithuania was instigated by the West “in violation of… international law”.
The secretary of Russia’s Security Council warned that “appropriate measures” would be taken “in the near future”.
“Their consequences will have a serious negative impact on the population of Lithuania,” he added, without giving any further details.
Earlier on Tuesday, the EU ambassador was summoned to the Russian foreign ministry over the blockade.
Last week, the Lithuanian authorities announced they would ban goods subject to EU sanctions from passing through their territory to Kaliningrad.
Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said: “It’s not Lithuania doing anything: it’s European sanctions that started working from 17 June… It was done with consultation from the European Commission and under European Commission guidelines.”
The EU has echoed Lithuania’s statement, saying that the country is just implementing sanctions imposed by the EU as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The sanctions list includes coal, metals, construction materials and advanced technology.
So basically Lithuania is telling Russia, “You’ll have to speak to my manager about this. There’s nothing I can do.”
Which makes things even worse as it sets Russia on course for a conflict with not just Lithuania, but the whole EU, which is dominated by the Germans as everyone knows.
The obvious risk here is that Russia decides to invade Lithuania and the rest of the Baltic states, which would be a direct war with NATO.
At that point, the US would have decide: are we prepared to go into full-blown hot war with Russia over Lithuania?
Obviously that would be the most insanely idiotic thing in the history of human civilization–risking nuclear war over Lithuania–but you may be underestimating just how psychotically insane and bloodthirsty the people who run America truly are. They are all dyed-in-the-wool Cold Warriors who see no difference between Russia of today and the Soviet Union of the Cold War era. These lunatics (and their successors) in the Pentagon, on the National Security Council, and on the Joint Chiefs of Staff have been wanting nuclear war with the Russians since 1962.
They will accept nothing less than total and completion domination over the entire planet, and the mere idea of ceding even an inch of territory anywhere on the face of the planet is completely unacceptable to them.
But they also know that if Russia invades Lithuania, and we do nothing in response, that’s the end of NATO right there. It proves the Article 5 guarantee (an invasion of one NATO member is an invasion of all NATO members) is nonexistent, and NATO ceases to exist.
And if NATO ceases to exist, then Russia will basically have free reign over all of Europe. America will be booted out and no longer have any sort of power and control over the continent. The Russians will take over the Baltics, and they might even launch an invasion as far off as Poland and Germany simply because they can and there’s nothing stopping them.
As a member of the Nato military alliance, Lithuania is protected by collective defence treaties.
We may soon see just how “protected” Lithuania truly is.
US state department spokesman Ned Price said the US was standing by Lithuania, adding that the country’s commitment to Nato’s Article 5 – which views an attack on one member state as an attack on all – was “iron clad”.
Yeah, they’ll say this, but do the Russians believe it?
If the Russians have concluded that Article 5 is now a big bluff, and that the Americans have gone soft and become a nation of woke, rainbow flag-adorned pussies, then they might just go ahead and invade Lithuania once and for all.
This is a situation to pay close attention to right now.
It’s already a showdown between Russia and NATO in diplomatic terms. It might turn into a military showdown as well.
Whatever choice russia makes…
Is fine by me.
NATO and The west are beging for it. They may not like what they get and send in “The Pronoun” Brigade