Lithuania: Blockade against Kaliningrad outraged Moscow

Lithuania: Blockade against Kaliningrad outraged Moscow By Cathrin Kahlweit, Kyiv - 3 hrs ago In response to the attack on Ukraine, Lithuania is implementing EU-imposed sanctions against Moscow, stopping rail freight to the Russian enclave. Is there a second trouble spot there? Blockade against Kaliningrad outraged Moscow In the wake of the Ukraine war, a conflict is developing in the Baltic States that has the potential to become a second trouble spot in the region. Since last Saturday, Lithuania has blocked the rail transport of goods subject to EU sanctions through its territory to the Russian exclave of Kalinigrad. The enclave, with its center in the former Königsberg, where, among other things, a large, ice-free Russian Navy base and launch pads for Russian Iskander missile systems are located in the Baltic Sea, is geographically sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania and has no land border with Russia. The cargo department of the Lithuanian railway informed the authorities in Kaliningrad by letter on June 17 of their move. Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis commented on this at the meeting of EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg on Monday. It is not "Lithuania itself" that is taking steps on its own, but that jointly agreed EU sanctions are being implemented after appropriate consultations with the EU Commission. However, this does not apply, for example, to energy imports to Kaliningrad; the oil boycott will only come into effect in its entirety at the end of the year. Affected by the blockade are sanctioned goods such as coal and metal, building materials and high technology - according to the outraged Kaliningrad governor Anton Alikhanov, this accounts for up to 50 percent of goods imported into Kaliningrad. Other transit traffic will not be blocked. As early as February, after Russia's attack on Ukraine, the government, like the entire EU, closed its airspace to Russian planes, so that transport aircraft for the route between Kaliningrad and Russia had to take a detour via the Baltic Sea. With the restrictions on the rail route, Kaliningrad now has to intensify ship transport. Russian government protest On the Telegram channel of the Kaliningrad Oblast, it was promptly announced that additional cargo ships could be deployed within a week to "replace rail transport." Kaliningrad is about a thousand kilometers from Moscow, and it is much closer to Vilnius and Warsaw. The Russian government immediately protested the restrictions; These violate "international law," according to the deputy chief of the Russian Federation Council, Konstantin Kosachev. Among other things, Moscow is referring to an international agreement that regulates transit between the Russian exclave and the rest of Russia. Kosachev did not address how many international legal acts Russia violated with its war of aggression against Ukraine, the use of internationally banned weapons, the deportation of civilians and the imposition of the death penalty on soldiers. Kosachev also complained that if this continues, the "West will probably soon question the freedom of the seas" - which the Russian fleet in the Black Sea off the Ukrainian coast has been doing for many months. Discussions about Attack on Nato Territory Lithuania, occupied by the USSR under Stalin during World War II and a Soviet republic until 1991, has been the target of Russian fantasies of aggression since the beginning of the war. Just last week, a Duma deputy introduced a law in Moscow that would retrospectively declare the Lithuanians' declaration of independence invalid. The three small Baltic states, which are particularly hostile to Russia due to the history of their occupation and joined the EU and NATO in 2004, are considered a possible further deployment area for the Russian army if the war escalates. For weeks, Russian state television has been discussing, among other things, whether the army should open a "corridor" from Belarus through Poland, the so-called Suwalki Gap, and thus bypass the overland route through Lithuania. That would mean an attack on NATO territory. The sanctioning of the transport of goods is thus just another step that is likely to further fuel tensions between the Baltic States and Russia, even if the measure is implemented on behalf of the EU. A few days before the summit in Brussels, at which the status of Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia as EU accession candidates will be decided, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy fears that the Russian army will step up its attacks again.