Free Republic

Russia’s Baltic Fleet has reportedly launched live-fire exercises in the Kaliningrad Region with an estimated 1,000 servicemen and over 100 units of military hardware taking part. Russia’s Baltic Fleet has launched the alleged exercises following escalating tensions with Lithuania due to a blockade of Russian transit cargo. “About 1,000 servicemen and over 100 units of combat and special equipment of artillery and missile units will take part in the maneuvers in the Kaliningrad region,” stated the report according to Crimea news. The firing exercises will reportedly be carried out by artillerymen using “Grad and Uragan multiple rocket launchers,Hyacinth large-calibre guns,...

LONDON (Reuters) -Russia warned NATO member Lithuania on Monday that unless the transit of goods to Russia's Kaliningrad exclave on the Baltic Sea was swiftly restored then Moscow would take undisclosed measures to defend its national interests. With east-west relations at a half-century low over Russia's Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, Vilnius banned the transit of goods sanctioned by the European Union through Lithuanian territory to and from the exclave, citing EU sanction rules. Russia's foreign ministry summoned Lithuania's top envoy in Moscow to deliver a protest while the Kremlin said the situation was beyond serious. "The situation is more...

In 1945, Stalin seized East Prussia, Germany's venerable redoubt on the Baltic Sea, as a spoil of war. A portion went to the "People's Republic" that the Soviets had just created in Poland. He kept the rest. The last surviving Germans were killed or deported. The cozy old Königsberg of the Teutonic Knights—the home, during the Enlightenment, of no less than Immanuel Kant—was transformed into Kaliningrad—a bleak Soviet place named after Mikhail Kalinin, the token peasant who was titular head of Stalin's USSR.