There is a place in Europe where the inhabitants have nerves on edge as much as those who live in Kyiv. It is Kaliningrad, Russia outside Russia, the exclave on the Baltic Sea between Poland and Lithuania, in all scarce 500 thousand inhabitants. And precisely those who live close to the Suwalki corridor are very nervous, a 104-kilometer-long strip of land that leads from Kaliningrad to Belarus and that is described by military experts as the Achilles’ heel of the Atlantic Alliance in northeastern Europe. In the event of a Russian offensive against NATO – these experts say – it would be enough for Moscow to close this passage to isolate from the rest of the Alliance all three Baltic countries, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, with the related NATO troops stationed on their territories. So that “Russia could take control of the Baltics more quickly than we could defend them“, as General Ben Hodges, former commander of US troops in Europe, has always feared. Hence, beware of Kaliningrad.

“Key” and “lock” at the same time, according to the definition he makes of it on geopolitica.info the scholar Nicolò Sorio, if Kaliningrad is the Achilles’ heel for NATO, represents for Russia the paradigm of the security dilemma. When relations between Russians and Westerners tend to beauty – reflects Sorio – it appears as the strategic “key” to open the doors of Europe to the Federation. Here then it becomes the most advanced place of economic experimentation (it is a Free Zone), politics (the only Oblast, Region, led by a plenipotentiary with the powers of a real president), the vanguard of a hybrid system between centralism and liberalism. But when, as now, in relations between Moscow and the West the barometer tends to ugly, then the “key” is thrown away and Kaliningrad becomes only impenetrable “lock”. 

Before the Soviet era, Kaliningrad (named after the chairman of the Presidium of the Soviet Supreme Kalinin) was called Koenigsberg and had been the capital of East Prussia, a piece of Germany separated from Germany after World War I according to the Treaty of Versailles, history repeats itself sometimes. Some things that must be kept in mind of Koenigsberg: the philosopher Kant was born there and it is the homeland of amber being 90% of the planet’s mineral extracted here. For those who love past history we could add that it was founded by the Teutonic Knights in 1255: and to return to more recent times, it should not be forgotten that here, in a bunker now a museum, the last commander of the Nazi troops, Otto Lasch, signed the surrender to the Soviet army, on April 9, 1945. Anche Koenigsberg, like Dresden and other German and European cities, was completely destroyed by Allied bombs; at the end of the 300 thousand inhabitants, there were only 20 thousand, all Germans, “invited” by the victors to leave the city, since another “Sudeten question” had never appeared. A massive policy of Slavization followed, so much so that today, to give the idea, the exclave is called “Little Russia”.

The only port in the country where the sea never freezes, it was the flagship of the Soviet Navy, hosting 32 submarines and an Army of 90 thousand men. The implosion of the empire in 1991 had terrible consequences: the army was disbanded, the submarines dropped to 2, the soldiers did not know what to do with their trade. While the neighboring states, Poland, the Baltics, all countries of the former USSR, from friends turned into enemies. But Moscow did not underestimate the danger of disintegration. The first president of the new Russia, Boris Yeltsin, recognizing its strategic value, proclaimed the territory a Free Economic Zone, called Jantar, that is, Amber in Russian, from one of the greatest resources of the region, as we have seen. And then he created the figure of Plenipotentiary President. 

While relations with European countries and neighbors could be maintained without passing through Moscow. Vilnius was seen opening a consulate in Kaliningrad, and there was no need for a visa to visit the two cities for at least thirty days. Russia “open” before Putin. Then the frost. In 1999, Putin, then Prime Minister, made it clear at the Russia-EU Summit in Helsinki that from now on for Kaliningrad there would be “a strategic westernization driven by pragmatic nationalism.” That meant no westernization. In 2005 at the demonstration for the 750th anniversary of the foundation of Koenigsberg, the neighboring countries were not invited, neither Poland nor the Baltics, a disgrace to the common past of the city, given that the former East Prussia, of which it was the capital, at the end of the war was divided between Russia, Poland, and Lithuania.

Then, in 2012, after the war with Georgia (2008), Putin decided to launch the program of modernization of the Armed Forces and Kaliningrad became its heart reliving the fate of a new militarization. For fans of military strategy, Kaliningrad is today the pivot of that program called Anti-Access/Area-Denial (A2/AD), which consists of keeping enemies in check by preventing them from any maneuver, on the northern flank of the Atlantic Alliance. Aiming directly at the Achilles heel, as they said: conquer 104 kilometers, no more. Because they are more than enough to break the morale of the enemies.  

Since last December, when the new tug-of-war between Russia and NATO began, following Washington’s confirmation that Ukraine can (one day) join the Alliance, terror has returned to Kaliningrad. As palpable as what broke out in 2017, when neighboring Poland and the Baltics strengthened their defense systems. Which – translated – meant more weapons leveled against the city. Poland, for example, after writing in official documents that Russia is its main adversary, net of the allocated NATO troops (a thousand personnel) has strengthened its army with over 50 thousand men, 128 Leopard 2PL tanks, and a Patriot missile system. As for the Baltics, some of them, such as Lithuania, the closest to Kaliningrad, have even authorized the possession of sophisticated weapons to members of paramilitary groups.

Now that all the eyes of the Westerners are on the eastern border of Ukraine, perhaps with the gaze of the observers stretching a little towards Belarus, Kaliningrad cannot be kept out of sight. It is the spearhead of the attacker in the Baltic.