The rearmament of Kaliningrad, the Russian territory in the middle of Europe that is scary


Fifteen thousand square kilometers, an area slightly less than the Lazio region. This is the area of ​​the Kaliningrad oblast, a small exclave of the Russian Federation nestled between Poland and Lithuania. A strategic point for Moscow, as it represents an outlet to the Baltic Sea and is the only port in the region that does not freeze throughout the year. The hub is also fundamental from a military point of view, given that Kaliningrad is just 530 kilometers as the crow flies from Berlin and any weapon aimed at the German city would take just 45 seconds to strike, as would Warsaw and the Scandinavian capitals. and Baltic. A dangerous proximity, which led the Federation to continue rearming the exclave in coincidence with the war in Ukraine and the choice of Sweden and Finland to join NATO. “Forget the non-nuclear Baltics,” said former head of state and vice president of the Russian security council Dmitry Medvedev. A substantial lie, considering that for years Russia has been preparing Kaliningrad to host nuclear warheads, but which nevertheless underlines the more explicit desire than ever to arm the region even more.

The weapons

And to say that already in 2016 the Russians were preparing Kaliningrad for any eventuality. In fact, the movement of the short-range Iskander missiles with a nuclear tip in the westernmost oblast of the Federation dates back to that time. At the time it was thought to be a sort of response to NATO’s decision to leave the Aegis Aeshore interceptor facility in Romania and Poland, despite the fact that an agreement with Iran was reached in 2015, which is why it was placed. In 2018, not only the Iskanders took a permanent home in Kaliningrad but the hangar in which they were housed was even renovated: as the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) underlined in an article to Guardianas early as 2018, the Russians had carried out a major renovation of what appeared to be “an active nuclear weapons storage site in the Kaliningrad region, known as Kolosovka”.

The works did not seem to suggest the presence of nuclear weapons already, but subsequent declarations have in fact made it a certainty. Already in early February, a video posted on Telegram shows the landing of a Russian MiG-31K Foxhound jet carrying what appears to be a Kinzhal hypersonic ground attack missile, followed, according to unconfirmed sources, by four or five others. Equipping Kaliningrad with such a weapon is a major step, as the Kinzhal has a reported range of nearly 2,000 kilometers and can carry either a 1,100-pound fragmentation warhead or a 500-kiloton nuclear warhead, 33 times higher than “Fat Man” , the bomb dropped by the Americans on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.

The presence of such weapons, however, still remains for the moment a sort of simple threat to NATO: in fact, the 50 warplanes present there are mostly old Su-27 and Su-24 jets, unsuitable to carry a Kinzhal. However, the Federation has been working for some time on aeronautical updates and any changes to the current assets are always possible: according to the military analyst Rob Lee, in the event of a conflict on a global scale, such a missile could easily hit Western Europe and Ankara within 7/10 minutes of launch at the latest. Being missiles that fly at a lower height than traditional ballistic ones and that accelerate to a speed that exceeds 10 times the sound barrier, any defense would be evanescent.

Tests and possible attacks

In the event of any conflict, Kaliningrad would be ready. In early April, as reported Interfax, the Russian military units of the westernmost oblast of the Federation were involved in a series of war simulations: more than a thousand soldiers and more than 60 units of military equipment participated. Also involved in the exercises were 20 Su-27 fighters and Su-24 front-line naval aviation bombers, which simulated attacks on low-speed air and ground targets and command posts. Both an offensive and a defensive exercise, because the Russian concern is that the West may try somehow to retaliate against Kaliningrad.

For this reason, Deputy Foreign Minister Alexsander Grushko told the TASS agency that “playing with the oblast would be like playing with fire: I hope Europe has the good sense not to do so”. A risky move if you think that in the hometown of Immanuel Kant, whose statue still stands in front of the city university, there would be the 11th Army Corps, which has between 100 and 200 thousand Russian soldiers and also the Baltic fleet. , anchored in the city port, which has 42 surface ships. For this reason the oblast remains difficult to attack: to make a comparison, in this region of Russia there are a hundred times more men and weapons present in another pro-Russian theater of war that Ukraine could follow: Transnistria.

The Hong Kong of Russia

Also from an economic point of view the city has assumed an ever greater value in recent years. In fact, since 2019, almost a third of Russian GDP is produced in its westernmost oblast and the reason is clear: many oligarchs have moved here the seats of their empires in various sectors, from gas to oil, from aluminum to agro-industry and to technology. Until recently, the reason was to avoid US sanctions: in this regard, in 2018 Putin had established a “special administration” on Oktyabrsky Island, on the Pregel River that runs through the city of Kaliningrad, precisely to allow the oligarchs to have a safe place at home for their capital (the same was also done for Russky Island, near the borders with China and North Korea). A choice that pursues the ancient desire to make the city a sort of “Hong Kong of Russia”: in fact, there are already 60 foreign companies attributable to Russian oligarchs who have abandoned Western tax havens to return home.



Let's talk about "The rearmament of Kaliningrad, the Russian territory in the middle of Europe that is scary" with our community!
Start a new Thread

Philip Owell

Professional blogger, here to bring you new and interesting content every time you visit our blog.