[News] Moscow's fury over Poland's decision to rename Kaliningrad (and why this territory is crucial to Russia)

[#Steeven.™]

The Kremlin reacted furiously to the announcement by a Polish government body that it proposed changing the name of the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea coast.

The Committee for the Standardization of Geographical Designations Abroad in Poland indicated that the city and the wider area of this territory should be called Królewiec.

This was the traditional name of the place, he argued, and justified his proposal to abandon the current "name imposed" by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Moscow called the decision "bordering on insanity" and "a hostile act."

"We know that, throughout history, Poland has from time to time fallen into this Russian-hating madness," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

 

New name with centuries of history
For several centuries, before World War II (1939-45), the area was known as Königsberg and was part of East Prussia. Królewiec is the Polish translation of Königsberg.

However, after World War II, the city and the region in general came under Soviet administration. The Soviets renamed it Kaliningrad after Mikhail Kalinin, one of the leaders of the Bolshevik revolution.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Kaliningrad became part of Russia as an exclave - an area geographically separated from a country's main territory - between Poland and Lithuania.

Kaliningrad is of strategic importance to Moscow because it hosts the Russian Baltic Fleet in the port of Baltiysk and is one of the few ice-free Russian European ports in winter.

On Tuesday the Polish state committee announced that it was recommending with immediate effect that the town be renamed in Poland as Królewiec, and the wider area of the enclave as Obwód Królewiecki.

He explained that the name Kaliningrad is not related to the city or the region, and has an "emotional and negative" connotation in Poland.

 

Kalinin's dark legacy

Mikhail Kalinin was one of the six signatories to the Soviet Politburo who ordered the execution of more than 21,000 Polish prisoners of war in Katin - now Russian territory - in 1940.

Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine and its propaganda campaigns led Poland to reassess controversial "imposed names", the committee described.

"Each country has the right to use in its language the traditional names that make up its cultural heritage, but it cannot be forced to use names that are unacceptable to it," the committee said.

Moscow initially blamed the Nazis for the Katin Massacre when the Germans discovered the mass graves in 1943.

As Moscow imposed a communist regime on Poland after World War II, relatives of the victims were unable to speak publicly about the crimes or find out anything for five decades.

Russia recognized in 1990 the responsibility of the USSR of that massacre.

 

Border reinforcement
Although the state committee's recommendation is not binding, it is expected that Polish state bodies will start referring to Kaliningrad as Królewiec.

The Polish Foreign Ministry issued a positive assessment of the name change.

Poland has also begun to reinforce its border with the enclave following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The Polish army temporarily put up a barbed wire fence and last month began installing cameras and motion sensors along the 232 km demarcation line.

They have also placed anti-tank obstacles at border crossings.

Polish officials fear that Russia could use that border as a new route for migrants from third countries to the EU, after reports of an increase in direct flights to Kaliningrad from the Middle East and other regions emerged.

Poland erected a 5.5m-high steel fence along part of its border with Belarus, after the number of migrants crossing from there into its territory, as well as into Lithuania and Latvia, skyrocketed.

 

A strategic exclave

For Russia, Kaliningrad is one of its most strategic territories outside its borders.

The exclave, of just under a million people, has become a focal point of deepening divisions between this country and the West, which have been exacerbated by the invasion of Ukraine.

Russia has less than 200 km of coastline in the Baltic Sea, almost half in Kaliningrad.

With the recent accession of Finland to NATO, and if that of Sweden is completed, more than 97% of the remaining 8,000 km of coastline will remain in the hands of the alliance countries: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Finland.

This makes the value of Kaliningrad to Russia even higher.

Experts say that this small territory is crucial both for Moscow's offensive against Ukraine and to ensure its defenses against any hostility from NATO countries.

Indeed, there have been reports on several occasions of Russia's deployment of nuclear weapons in Kaliningrad.

Moscow does not deny this, but it also does not acknowledge that it has deployed nuclear weapons in Kaliningrad and has often used vague language about these accusations.

"The deployment of one weapon or another, the deployment of military units, etc. on Russian territory is an exclusively sovereign matter of the Russian Federation," Kremlin spokesman Dimitry Peskov said in 2018.

Senior officials, such as the Lithuanian president, claim that Moscow has already deployed nuclear weapons in the strategic Baltic region.

 

From Koenigsberg to Kaliningrad
Kaliningrad is the only one of Russia's 46 oblasts that does not have a land border with another region of the country.

In addition to its strategic and military importance, the exclave is of great historical importance to both Europe and Russia.

The roots of the territory go far back in history and are closely linked to the fate of East Prussia and its capital, Köenigsberg.

Ancient Königsberg was founded by the Teutonic Knights in 1255, a German-Catholic crusade who ruled Prussia. In that city -when it was part of the Kingdom of Prussia- the philosopher Immanuel Kant was born and died

When East Prussia seceded from Germany after World War I, the territory remained part of Germany until early 1945, at the end of World War II, when it was conquered by the Soviet Red Army.

At the Yalta Conference, its division between Poland and the Soviet Union was agreed, which was formalized in Potsdam in 1945.

 

Between Russia and the West
Hosting the only port on the Baltic Sea that is free of ice all year round. Kaliningrad is crucial for both Russia and neighboring states in ensuring transport and trade throughout the region, where temperatures often dip below zero for much of the winter.

But apart from transport and trade, the exclave is a strategically vital region from a military point of view for Moscow due to its location.

It is home to Russia's Baltic Fleet and is positioned as Russia's westernmost territory, close to the heart of Europe.

In May 2022 the Baltic Fleet announced that it carried out a series of simulated missile attacks from its nuclear-capable Iskander system.

The Iskander missile system was first introduced to the region in 2016 and then upgraded in 2018, as part of a Russian strategy to counter NATO's deployment of a ballistic missile defense shield in Europe.

There have also been regular military exercises involving the Baltic Fleet and a series of maneuvers since the invasion of Ukraine.

"Kaliningrad has been a focal point of Russian security concerns since the first wave of NATO enlargement was announced in the 1990s," Ruth Deyermond, Professor of Post-Soviet Security at the Department of Security Studies, told BBC Mundo. King's College London War.

"Inevitably, in periods when tensions between Russia and NATO rise, concerns about Kaliningrad also rise," she added.

Kaliningrad has been heavily militarized for years, but this militarization was reinforced after the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014.

And the more relations between Russia and the West cool, the more the military presence of both parties in the region is reinforced.

 

https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-internacional-65553482