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EUROPE ABOUT KALININGRAD The Infographics Show: How Russia Will Lose Kaliningrad PLAY YOUTUBE VIDEO Original article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZhlyPvcjb0 Peter Burgess COMMENTARY Peter Burgess
How Russia Will Lose Kaliningrad The Infographics Show Oct 1, 2024 14.5M subscribers ... 390,727 views ... 8.6K likes Kaliningrad has been Russia's secret weapon against NATO for years, but now it’s looking like Putin is losing his grip on it. Why is Kaliningrad suddenly a big problem for Putin? Watch to find out how this tiny piece of disputed land could change everything! 🔔 SUBSCRIBE TO THE INFOGRAPHICS SHOW ► https://www.youtube.com/c/theinfograp... 🔖 MY SOCIAL PAGES TikTok ► / theinfographicsshow Discord ► / discord Facebook ► / theinfographicsshow Twitter ► / theinfoshow 💭 Find more interesting stuff on: https://www.theinfographicsshow.com 📝 SOURCES:https://pastebin.com/1at5aADG All videos are based on publicly available information unless otherwise noted. Our Secret Weapon for growing on YouTube ➼ https://vidiq.com/theinfoshow/ Transcript 0:00 Kaliningrad- it's long been a thorn in NATO's side. Russia's trump card to make any attempt to defend the Baltic states all but impossible for NATO. Yet now Vladimir Putin is on the verge of finally losing the Russian enclave. Here’s why. The Russian enclave of Kaliningrad has long been an important lynchpin of Russian national security. Heavily militarized, the enclave is basically built to be a fortress—and it has to be, considering that it sits right on the only route NATO can take to repel a Russian assault on the Baltic members. At least that was until Sweden and Finland's ascension into the NATO alliance. But Kaliningrad remains important for Russia nonetheless. From here, Russia can threaten targets deep inside NATO borders with everything from long-range ballistic missiles to tactical nuclear weapons and even air strikes. Sitting along Poland's northern border and separated from Russian satellite state Belarus by a thin strip of land, Kaliningrad has been NATO's worst nightmare since the breakup of the Soviet republics. It's also an important commercial hub for Russia, though, as it holds one of the only deepwater ports that doesn’t freeze over and remains usable 1:03 year-round by the entire Russian Federation. This makes it a vital hub in Russian trade, helping overcome Russia's historical weakness in a strategic lack of warm water ports. Kaliningrad oblast, and the capital city by the same name, has swapped hands several times throughout its history, but it's always been a strategically important territory. The city itself has historically had a large number of German speakers, earning the name Königsberg. In 1871, the territory was officially made part of the German Empire and would quickly develop into a major trade hub between East and West thanks to its strategic location and access to warm water ports. Poles have historically also been a large part of the Kaliningrad population until World War II, when Polish and Jewish citizens were deported to concentration camps en masse. Under the Potsdam Agreement, drafted by the victorious allied powers to determine the administration of occupied German territory, the territory officially became a Soviet oblast, with a name change to Kaliningrad. The city and oblast were named in honor of Mikhail Kalinin, 2:05 chairman of the presidium of the Supreme Soviet- the same man who signed an executive order in 1940 ordering the execution of around 22,000 Polish civilian and military prisoners of war. All remaining Germans in the territory were expelled, and the area was resettled with ethnic Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarussians, solidifying the USSR's claim on the territory. To wipe out all remaining German identity, not only was the city and territory renamed, but Soviet Premier Leonid Brezhnev ordered the demolition of Königsberg Castle despite protests by the locals as well as architects and historians. The oblast heavily depended on fishing to rebuild its economy after the war, and its importance as a seafaring commercial hub would only grow from there. The Russian Navy soon built up a presence in the Oblast, through which it could access the Baltic Sea year-round. With Finland and Sweden neutral to NATO, this allowed Soviet surface ships and especially submarines to threaten vital NATO lines of communication and trade routes in case of war. 3:05 Kaliningrad remained an exclave of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic rather than become a part of the Lithuanian Socialist Soviet Republic. Historians differ on why this decision was made, with some believing that denying it to the Lithuanian SSR would help further separate the Baltic SSRs from the West. Others, however, believe that the oblast was entirely too strategically important to allow any other republic control over it. Despite Stalin's original decision to keep Kaliningrad as a Soviet exclave, Nikita Khrushchev would later offer the entire oblast to the Lithuanian SSR, which they would decline because it would add over a million ethnic Russians to Lithuania- cementing Russian hold over their own territory. This would prove a wise decision when Lithuania eventually sought out its independence during the Soviet Union's collapse, and a happy accident for Khrushchev considering how disastrous it would have been for Russia to lose Kaliningrad in the collapse of the USSR. 4:02 Kaliningrad would remain part of the Russian Federation after the fall of the USSR, but the situation would complicate greatly as Poland and Lithuania became members of both NATO and the European Union. Any Russian troops or civilians moving in or out of the enclave must pass through NATO territory, creating a politically charged atmosphere. However, to ease tensions, special travel arrangements were introduced for residents, such as the Facilitated Transit Document and the Facilitated Rail Transit Document. In the wake of the USSR, many Russian cities were renamed from their original Soviet names, which frequently honor Soviet figures. The idea of renaming Kaliningrad has come up multiple times since the 1990s, with many supporting a return to its German name. In 2009, the head of the city's administration supported renaming the city, and in 2011, the governor of the oblast suggested a referendum be held, though none was ever actually implemented. The Moscow government has since stated that renaming would be inappropriate- but the truth is much more self-serving. 5:03 Which is that Russia doesn't want to allow Kaliningrad to rename itself because it fears a growing separatist movement in the oblast. Currently, there are multiple separatist or irredentist movements in the oblast. Of the former, the Baltic Republican Party supports the creation of an independent Baltic state. The party was formed shortly after the USSR's collapse and Russia's weakening grip on the 1st of December 1993. However, Russia eventually signed legislation that dissolved the political legitimacy of the party on March 26, 2003. The new law would state that any political party would require a regional branch in at least half of the territories of the Russian Federation and must have at least 10,000 members. It was a handy way to immediately take political power away from independence movements across the fringes of the Russian Federation. The Baltic Republican Party would nonetheless file an appeal with the Constitutional Court of Russia because it's fun to pretend Russia is a democracy. Unsurprisingly, 6:00 the appeal was rejected, and to this day, the BRP remains an illegitimate political organization. That does not mean, however, that the party lost support in the oblast, and while it waned, support for the BRP would skyrocket after Russia's disastrous invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Residents of Kaliningrad, who had enjoyed a strong relationship with their NATO neighbors, were suddenly under the same sanctions as the rest of the Russian Federation. Moscow was blamed by the party's leader, Rustam Vasiliev, as a barrier to the oblast's economic development, and given the punishing effect of sanctions, it's easy to see why many residents agreed. Further, the BRP also claims that Kaliningrad doesn't belong to the Russian Federation but rather to Europe itself. Some in Lithuania believe that a small part of the oblast rightfully belongs to Lithuania. While the movement doesn't have much popular support, they claim that territory between the Pregolya and Nemunas rivers- known as Lithuania Minor- rightfully belongs to the country of Lithuania. Linas Balsys, who served as a deputy in the 7:00 Lithuanian parliament, has even called for international discussion on the subject, though met with little success in gaining recognition for the movement's claims. Others in Lithuania, however, have advocated for the complete de-Russification of Kaliningrad and continue to do so. In 1994, former head of the Lithuanian state Vytautas Landsbergis called for the Russians' decolonization of Kaliningrad, and later, some in parliament stated that the entire oblast should either become part of Lithuania or an independent Baltic state, supporting the Baltic Republican Party's views. When there's no real attempt at taking Kaliningrad away from Russia, the Russians simply invent one. After an article published in the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza prompted many Polish commentators to state that Kaliningrad should be part of Poland, Russian state media took the ball and ran with it- claiming the comments as evidence of a Polish preparation to formally annex Kaliningrad. Russian propaganda outlets such as Pravda.ru stated that the Polish government was preparing to seize the oblast and had a plan prepared and ready to implement. Polish authorities 8:03 were quick to dismiss these claims, and to date, no elite force of secret Polish agents has yet to be dispatched to annex Kaliningrad. For Russia, though, such baseless accusations aren't just rooted in a very real and deep sense of paranoia but are politically useful for keeping the people divided against their European neighbors and firmly under the control of the Kremlin. In the 1990s though, some Germans attempted to reverse-colonize Kaliningrad by pulling the ultimate Uno reverse card on the Russian government. Far-right political groups clamored for the resettlement of the oblast by German citizens, citing its historical link to greater Germany despite the German government itself stating that it had no historical right to the territory. German groups collected funds to establish settlements in the oblast, with one in Yasnaya Polyana- which the Germans called Trakehnen- and the other opting to build housing in the village of Olkhovatka in the Gusevsky District. At Yanaya Polyana, the group Aktion Deutsches Königsberg raised funds to construct housing 9:03 for ethnic Germans and a German-language school. The influx of high-paying jobs in construction quickly enticed many others to come to the area, and ethnic Germans soon rose to a population of over 400. Rather than returnees from the original German inhabitants, though, most of the reverse-colonizers were actually Russian Germans, many of them unable to speak German and have been rejected as immigrants by the German government due to insufficient proof of German ancestry. Despite this, though, a second settlement began construction in 1998. Initially, the local Russian administration largely ignored the German movement. They were, after all, proving to be an economic boon for local villages. However, as word of the movement to resettle Kaliningrad spread in German media, the Russian government began to crack down. Dietmar Munier, founder of the movement to resettle, was banned from traveling into Kaliningrad. In 2006 completely of his own free will and not under threat of accidentally falling out a window, Munier sold his stakes in 10:00 the project to Alexander Mantai, who quickly turned it into a for-profit venture but would ultimately see the entire thing liquidated in 2015 for violating Russian law on NGOs. All European governments and the EU recognize Kaliningrad as a part of the Russian Federation, but the people themselves may be of a different opinion. With hardships placed upon them due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine and subsequent sanctions- a military campaign that those in Kaliningrad do not see themselves as having anything to do with- resentment towards the Moscow government has only grown in the oblast Losing Kaliningrad would be a major blow for Russia, though thanks to Vladimir Putin's.... creative decision-making, the exclave's importance is not quite what it once was. In years past, Kaliningrad was a bulwark against NATO, allowing Moscow to perpetually keep the alliance off-balance by threatening to invade the Baltic States and then holding on to them on the defensive. Only a narrow strip of land about two dozen miles wide, known as the Suwalki Gap gives NATO access to its Baltic partners. However, any NATO troops 11:03 attempting to reinforce the Baltics in case of war would find themselves traveling along very limited avenues and under constant fire from the Kaliningrad and Belarusian sides of the gap. The gap allowed Russia to choke the Baltic NATO states away from the rest of the alliance, with the only option being a complicated and risky attempt to reinforce via the Baltic Sea. This gave Putin the leverage to enact what has been feared by US defense planners for decades—a fait accompli attack on NATO itself. In essence, the attack would involve Russian troops quickly moving to take territory across the Baltics. This could come in the form of a major, rapid offensive to take the capitals of Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania, but even a smaller-scale campaign seizing only a few minor cities would be sufficient for the task. Up against a small number of NATO defenders, the overwhelming numbers of the Russian army would quickly seize its objectives, at which point all it had to do was simply go on the defensive. NATO forces attempting to break into the Baltics 12:01 would have to punch through the Suwalki Gap, a proposition that could require weeks of an air and missile campaign before being safe enough for ground forces to attempt a crossing. By that time, war weariness and threats of nuclear escalation could be enough to deter an excursion altogether. Russia's strategy hinged on two key factors- the difficulty in pushing through the Suwalki Gap or attempting to reinforce by sea, and the reluctance of NATO to fight Russia right on its own border, necessitating strikes at Russian targets inside their own territory, and thus provoking a nuclear escalation. The ultimate question was: how many NATO states would honestly risk all-out nuclear war over the Baltics, especially if Russia was only occupying a few cities close to its own border? While members like the US, UK, and France would be likely to remain ironclad in the face of Russian aggression, states like Hungary, Turkey, and Poland may be more reluctant. Given how unpopular the decision to admit the indefensible Baltic states into the alliance was and continues 13:01 to be for many in NATO, it would have been a very good gamble by the Russian Federation. The ultimate goal, though, would not be to take the Baltic states- though that's a major plus for Vladimir Putin, who seeks to reestablish the USSR. The Baltics would dramatically strengthen Russia's naval position and add a greater buffer between Russian territory and NATO- but the greater price would be the dissolution of NATO itself. At the heart of the alliance is the idea of collective defense; while Article 5 is not actually legally binding for any member of the alliance, all members believe in deterring conflict by committing to it fully. Breaking the perceived ironclad commitment to Article 5 would send a political shockwave across NATO. Member states closer to Russia would quickly lose confidence in the alliance, and clever Russian information warfare would help sway populations into accepting becoming a part of the Russian sphere of influence over remaining in an alliance that would likely not come to their defense and could prove to be a major liability by inviting Russian aggression in the first place. 14:00 However, the shockwaves wouldn't remain inside of NATO, as the current world order is underpinned by a network of alliances and partnerships between the United States and nations around the world, from Africa to the Pacific. If these nations saw NATO collapse and refuse to fulfill the terms of its own charter, confidence in these alliances, and others with European powers, would wane significantly. The careful global order that the West has built since the end of the Cold War and largely kept the peace would begin to unwind- creating opportunity for a resurgent Russia and an emerging China, both fully hostile to Western ideals of liberalism and democracy. And then Putin single-handedly set back Russian national defense by several centuries, undoing over a century of work at securing Russian interests against those of the West. Amongst one of the most brilliant strategic minds humanity has ever produced, Vladimir Putin would order an invasion of Ukraine in 2022- immediately prompting Sweden and Finland to join the NATO alliance. With Sweden and Finland both in the alliance, 15:00 the Baltic Sea is now a NATO lake, and Russia's fleet in Kaliningrad is basically only good for creating very expensive artificial reefs. Even more importantly, though, Finland has doubled the length of the border between Russia and NATO- a super big brain move by Putin- and put NATO forces in Finland within two hours drive of St. Petersburg. The once indefensible Baltic states are now a ferry ride away from Helsinki or Stockholm, while combat aircraft based in Finland and Sweden provide air cover for an amphibious reinforcement operation. Strategic bombers drop bombs on Russian foreheads, attempting to move into the Baltics. NATO control over the Swedish island of Gotland gives them full control over the entire Baltic Sea, and even now, the Swedes are turning Gotland into an unsinkable aircraft carrier. For all intents and purposes, Kaliningrad has gone from Russia's trump card to a strategic vulnerability. The same Suwalki gap that NATO forces once had to push through under perilous levels of fire now cuts Russian reinforcements off from the enclave. Ships in Kaliningrad, which would once have rushed to cut off the Baltic coast from NATO reinforcements, 16:03 are now threatened with being promoted to submarines if they leave port. Russia's waning influence is being deeply felt by residents of Kaliningrad, many of which would support independence. This is a perilous development as Russia continues to strip Kaliningrad of combat power, moving troops and equipment from the oblast to the battlefields of Ukraine. Where once Kaliningrad bristled with firepower, the oblast is now significantly weakened due to a need for hardware and personnel in the Ukrainian war, and this is a weakness that separatist movements may take advantage of. We've already seen a Wagner force go rogue and nearly march on Moscow itself in 2023, and as of the writing of this script, Russia has experienced an explosion of separatist violence in Dagestan, undermining its hold on the region. Slowly but surely, all across the fringes of the Russian Federation, separatists are seeing an opportunity- and sooner rather than later, Putin may lose his grip on what was once his most important territory. Now check out “The Dumb Reason Russia Is Losing The War.” Or watch this video instead!

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