Welcome to Kaliningrad, site of the world’s next crisis…and perhaps World War III? Since
the end of the previous World War, it’s been a Russian semi-exclave.
Putin is a fan of it because it is the western most part of Russia.
However, that comes with a problem.
It’s not attached to mainland Russia. But it is accessible via the Baltic Sea
from Saint Petersburg—at least some of the time. But we’ll get to that.
To travel there by land, Russia has to cross through multiple other countries.
Belarus is the obvious starting point because they get along so well.
After that, you must choose between Lithuania and Poland,
with Lithuania being the much more direct route.
Indeed, this is a story about Lithuania.
And the big speed bump is that it is a member of the European Union.
That matters because of the Russo-Ukrainian War.
On March 15, 2022, the European Union announced an export ban on Russian steel products.
It came with a three-month implementation delay, which takes us to June.
Russia now has steel on the mainland that they want to
ship to Kaliningrad. The obvious way to do that is to go through Lithuania.
But Lithuania has said no—there are sanctions to enforce.
Russia has responded with threats.
The United States has responded with counter threats.
And now everyone in the world is feeling just a little bit less comfortable.
What is striking about the situation is how it eerily parallels what happened
in Ukraine. Although the current crisis has reunited their fates,
both of these stories start way back with the Soviet military.
On the Ukrainian side of things, this is all about the importance of the Crimean Peninsula.
From time immemorial, Russia has loved nothing more than a warm water port.
Down south, Sevastopol housed the black sea fleet.
Up north, the Soviet Union enjoyed the spoils from World War II, renamed the former German
city Konigsberg Kaliningrad, and made it the home of the Baltic Sea Fleet.
Russians dominated the Soviet Union.
And these being major Soviet military bases,
ethnic Russians began migrating to them in droves.
But the Soviet Union would not last forever. And that caused a major problem for both fleets.
In 1954, Moscow made a big decision.
The central government transferred the control of Crimea
from the Russian Soviet Socialist Republic to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.
Almost 40 years later, the Soviet Union fell apart.
This seemingly meant that the newly independent Ukraine had a good claim to the Black Sea Fleet.
A solution was reached in 1997:
The Partition Treaty on the Status and Conditions of the Black Sea Fleet.
Its name was long, and its terms were favorable to Russia.
Nine of every eleven ships went under Moscow’s control, with the remaining two going to Kyiv.
Ukraine was hard up on cash at that time, so the government
essentially sold its claim to a larger share of the fleet for $526 million.
Russia also agreed to pay Ukraine $97 million per year to rent the Sevastopol base.
And to top it off, Moscow promised to
“respect the sovereignty of Ukraine,
honor its legislation, and preclude interference in the internal affairs of Ukraine.” Oops.
That deal continued without major issue until September 24, 2008.
Putin was about to get annoyed.
President Viktor Yuschenko and Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko were both in power at that time.
They were pro-West
and they announced that all those nice Russian boats sitting in Sevastopol…well,
they had to leave in 2017—Ukraine was not going to renew the lease.
However, pro-East Viktor Yanukovych became President in 2010. Less than two months into
his term, he signed the Kharkiv Pact, extending Russia’s lease through 2042.
Then the Maidan Revolution began, and Yanukovych fled to Russia.
Putin sensed that the Pact might be in danger,
so he swooped in while Kyiv was in chaos to annex Crimea.
The formal annexation was basically how one could acquire a warm water port with extra steps.
Russia had a more elegant solution at the end of the Cold War as everyone
was declaring independence: just keep Kaliningrad.
The obvious problem with this choice is that there is no direct land route to it.
There is a sea route from Saint Petersburg we talked about,
but the Saint Petersburg port can freeze over during the winter.
That was the whole point in keeping Kaliningrad in the first place.
It is a warm water port, and it is perfect for the Baltic Sea Fleet.
In any case, all Russia had to do was go through Lithuania,
one of its former Soviet "brothers". Except Lithuania pivoted toward the west.
Fast forward to their 2003 European Union referendum.
The vote succeeded by a wide margin, with 91.1% support and 63.4% turnout.
They also joined NATO in 2004 with a bunch of other countries.
More recently, Lithuania has prepared to connect to the European power grid
through Poland, decreasing Russia’s leverage to retaliate against it.
And, to make a long story short, that takes us to today.
The EU is blocking steel exports, which are critical to the Russian defense industry.
Lithuania is enforcing that, even though the steel in question
is just supposed to go in transit from one part of Russia to another part of Russia.
Back in Ukraine, something like this motivated the 2022 invasion.
Russia started all this by annexing Crimea in 2014.
Ukraine took the obvious countermeasure, blocking Russian land access to the peninsula.
At first, Russia dealt with this by funneling tens of thousands of
people weekly across the Kerch Strait via ferry. This was an okay solution,
but it still limited the movement of Russians to their new possession.
The better medium-term solution was to build the Crimean Bridge, which opened to
great fanfare in May 2018 for cars, for trucks later that year, for rail passengers in 2019,
and finally rail freight in 2020. But apparently the long-term solution was to make a land bridge.
Much of the motivation for the 2022 invasion appeared to be integrating
the separatist regions into the Russian sphere.
However, Russia’s actions on the ground do not match up with that.
This is what the line of control looked like before the escalation February 24.
You can see that Russia has made substantial progress in Luhansk
and now controls almost all of the oblast.
But their movement in Donetsk has been very different.
The entire effort has been to go south toward Mariupol.
That is because Russia needed Mariupol to complete its Crimean land bridge,
which apparently was Russia’s bigger priority.
Curiously, they have barely budged westward.
As a result, a good chunk of Donetsk oblast remains in Ukrainian hands.
There are a few key differences with Lithuania, however,
that make this situation unlikely to spiral into war—at least in the current form.
First, the export restrictions in Lithuania are minimal.
Lithuania’s prime minister puts it as only effecting 1% of Russia’s freight.
By contrast, over in Crimea, Ukraine stopped everything.
This included damming the canal that runs to the peninsula, causing a water crisis.
Second, as mentioned earlier, Lithuania is a member of NATO.
That means Article V of the North Atlantic Treaty applies.
An attack on Lithuania would be an attack on all NATO members.
That means that Russia would be facing down the United States,
the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and a host of others.
This is also why Ukraine would have very much wanted NATO membership
before the current invasion began.
Finally, Russia is already preoccupied with a major war down south.
It would be difficult for Putin to stretch Russia even thinner against a much stronger opponent.
This is why Sweden and Finland are confident that joining NATO
will not result in the same Russian backlash,
something that we have discussed before.
Things could change, of course. For example, Putin could get frustrated if the EU ramped up
the export restrictions. But for now, the short-term likelihood of war is very low.
How do you think the Russian Lithuanian dispute will end?
Let me know in the comments. And if you enjoyed this video,
please like, share, and subscribe. And I will see you next time. Take care.