(ES) Vienna, June 26, 2022
Russia’s 1m-strong enclave on the Baltic, Kaliningrad (Königsberg until 1946), has become a new flashpoint in Putin’s military 
arm-wrestling with the West. The Kremlin is now sending nuclear missiles there and making warlike threats.
Prof James Ker-Lindsay of the London School of Economics explains in this short lecture what it’s all likely to mean.
Kaliningrad is the only part of Russia geographically separated from the rest of the Federation. Wedged between Lithuania and Poland, the city is more than 300 km from the rest of the Russian Federation. As the headquarters of Russia’s Baltic fleet, the enclave came to international attention in June when the Lithuanian government imposed EU-mandated restrictions on freight crossing its territory into Kaliningrad.
This has sparked more than the usual angry bluster from Moscow. The shipments of nuclear-capable missiles to Kaliningrad are evidently ominous.
- 23/06/22 Politico on frantic attempts in Brussels to calm the row.
- Wikipedia on the war-torn history of the German city where the 18th century philosopher Immanuel Kant
was born and later taught Russian officers during the Seven Year War. - In 2019 the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung described the violent rows over the dead apostle of reason, whose statue was defaced with pink paint.