On paper, Kaliningrad is a confetti on the map: 15,000 km2 in total, a size slightly larger than a French department, 500,000 inhabitants. But Kaliningrad, which is both the name of the region and its main city, is a symbol in several ways.
By geography first: it is a small Russian territory, but cut off from Russia. Much further north compared to Ukraine, caught between Poland and Lithuania, therefore between two countries of the European Union. Only connected to Russia by a kind of umbilical cord about sixty km long, the Suwalki corridor. It is also a symbol through history. Kaliningrad remained, for nearly ten centuries, a Germanic, Prussian and then German territory. It was then called Königsberg. It became Soviet in 1945, then Russian when the USSR broke up.
And it has become a military symbol. The territory has been over-armed by Moscow, equipped with planes and Iskander missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads, within firing range of the West. And with valuable access to the Baltic Sea. At the beginning of this month, Moscow carried out imposing maneuvers there, with 60 boats and 10,000 soldiers. So Kaliningrad, yes it is small. But for Moscow, it is an emblem.
On Sunday June 19, neighboring Lithuania therefore decided to impose trade sanctions on the small Russian territory; Vilnius has decided to ban the passage of Russian commercial convoys bound for Kaliningrad. As soon as they transport metals, coal, chemicals, computers, cell phones. And from next month, the ban will also target cement or alcohol, in other words all the products targeted by European sanctions against Russia.
For Lithuania, this is officially nothing more than the application of the decisions of the 27. But it is also obviously the expression of the concern of all the Baltic countries in the face of this Russian military presence on their doorstep. Lithuania specifies that only land convoys, freight trains, are concerned. Passage by sea remains possible. And passenger trains are still allowed.
Moscow is obviously looking at this with a very different eye. The Russian authorities see it as a form of Western aggression, an offensive act by NATO. The governor of Kaliningrad stresses that the sanctions concern all the same between 40 and 50% of the supply of the region. And yesterday, after Lithuania’s decision was announced, many Kaliningrad residents rushed to supermarkets to stock up.
Moscow therefore denounces today “a hostile action” and brandishes the threat of “serious” reprisals against Lithuania. The hypothesis of new “hybrid” attacks, cyber and digital offensives, seems plausible. But we also hear certain voices, on Russian social networks, calling outright for a takeover by force of the Suwalki corridor. This small territory of Kaliningrad is therefore a barrel of gunpowder. And everything that happens there can have considerable chain effects. History is riddled with major conflicts sparked by quarrels over confetti.