“KALININGRAD” (AMBERLAND) – A PROLOGUE TO GREATER EUROPE

Whensomeone insists, “Kaliningrad is part of Russia,” I can’t help but give a wrysmile and straighten my bow tie. Geography, my friends, never justifiespolitical vandalism. Kaliningrad isn’t Russia’s far‑flung fringe; it’s aEuropean bridgehead. Königsberg is Kant’s birthplace, not a circus act. It’s aplace where civilization ought to announce itself again – boldly, beautifully,decisively.

Moscowhas a clumsy habit of confusing war trophies with real statehood. For eightyyears the so‑called Kaliningrad Oblast – once East Prussia – has stood as proofof that confusion. The war trophy city of Königsberg (Królewiec, Karaliaučius),renamed to Kaliningrad, survives as an exclave that is less Russian thanunmistakably Soviet in both origin and spirit.

WhereGermans once scrubbed the pavements – an image that struck many Russians as aquaint Teutonic obsession with cleanliness – there now sit pocket‑sizedbureaucratic offices from which Russia tries to fashion an “outpost in Europe”.Yet the longer this goes on, the clearer it becomes: to Moscow this regionisn’t a window into Europe but a junk closet at the end of the house, cut offlong ago from the main staircase.

Sometimesthe whole of Russian geopolitics can be captured by a single street sign. In“Kaliningrad”, at the corner of Minin and Pozharsky Streets, a pair ofunderwear has dangled from the main street sign since 2018. Real underwear. Noone has removed it; when the post got a fresh coat of paint, the pants werepainted too. It’s comical, perhaps, but also chilling, because that littledetail is a perfect metaphor for Moscow’s “management” of this severed patch ofland – territory that is nominally its own yet feels ever more alien.Kaliningrad Oblast is like those dangling briefs: hanging there, never reallyfitting in.

Europe’slast empire knows how to conquer, but not how to coexist. The so‑calledKaliningrad is living proof. It wasn’t integrated culturally or economically;it was sliced off at gunpoint and held in place by missiles. A trophy forgottenin the attic, crusted with military hardware and ideas long past their expirydate. Königsberg was a university town, home to Kant. “Kaliningrad” is agarrison. Moving from one to the other wasn’t a transformation – it was anamputation.

CompareKaliningrad with Lithuania. Vilnius makes no historical claims, though itcould: Królewiec, once a vassal of the Polish crown, sat inside the oldPolish‑Lithuanian political edifice. Yet instead of nostalgia Lithuania choseorder. It is integrated into Europe – its laws, technology, the rule of law.Moscow, by contrast, plugged Kaliningrad into the logistics of fear: militarybases, transit skirmishes, energy blackouts. That is not a strategy; it isimprovisation dressed up as geopolitics.

Paradoxically,Lithuania now has more in common with Kaliningrad than Kaliningrad has with Russia.They share geography, climate, historical memory – they even have a lot of culturalsimilarities. What differs is their regimes. One faces the future; the other isstuck between Yalta and Potsdam. One builds a digital economy; the other hunts“provocateurs” on Telegram. One is transparent; the other lives in perpetualsuspicion.

Lithuania– unlike the so‑called Russian Federation – has learned to inhabit its own era.It joined the EU, NATO and Schengen, became a transit hub for ideas andsanctions, and stepped out of Russia’s imagined past into Europe’s tangiblepresent. “Kaliningrad”, meanwhile, remains frozen in the historical snapshotbetween Yalta and Potsdam, as if the future ended in 1946 with Mikhail Kalinin,whose name the region bears, and the frontier of time ran not along the NemanRiver but along the very idea of progress.

Hencethe estrangement. The so‑called Kaliningrad increasingly looks like an imperialshard never returned after the breakup. It is a piece of old furniturereassembled from the previous flat that simply won’t fit the new décor. It haseverything the Russian state loves: a heavy military presence, a frustratedpopulation, and a wistful myth that “things were better before”. But it lacksthe one thing that matters – connectedness: to the mainland, to the future, toany coherent political trajectory. The railway that once crossed Lithuania nowmeets barriers – not physical ones, but political: sanctions, restrictions,silence.

Theyouth feel it keenly. Residents of the Amber Coast look not toward Smolensk buttoward Šiauliai, Berlin, Riga. Because what Russia offers the region today – otherthan a pair of underpants fluttering on a road sign – is nothing to boastabout. Prospects for development? Only via federal subsidies or contracts withthe Defence Ministry. The future? Guarded at the crossing by the FSB. A link tothe world? Through sanctions and proxy schemes. This is not an outpost – it isa suitcase without a handle.

Playingat “referendums” is the politics of desperation. The so‑called Kaliningrad hasnever turned into a second Lithuania, but it hasn’t become a second Kazaneither. In truth it has become nothing at all, because it remains a piece ofland stripped of identity – appointed by Moscow, never chosen by its ownpeople. And the harder Russia tries to clutch it by force, the faster itslegitimacy drains away. Not because NATO is plotting anything, but becauseKönigsberg has long since – indeed, always – stood apart from Moscow; it justhasn’t linked up with anyone else yet.

Couldthe region break away from Russia? In theory, yes. In practice the issue isless about power than about purpose. The Kremlin can’t explain why it needsKaliningrad except for set‑piece footage on the military channel Zvezda.Lithuania, the EU and NATO, by contrast, know exactly what they would do if theregion itself asked for change: turn it into a transit hub, an educational center,a site of cultural restoration – not a bastion, but a bridge.

Whatmatters isn’t the underwear flapping on a road sign; it’s the direction. TodayKaliningrad faces a choice: hang there as a symbol of absurdity or step intothe future. Europe is no cure‑all, but it is a valid alternative – and againstthe backdrop of Russia’s accelerating decay that alternative looks ever moreattractive.

Makeno mistake: Russia will go on asserting its claim to Kaliningrad with missilesand nostalgia – and in return it will reap not loyalty, but rejection. Thenteachers will be left explaining to schoolchildren how it happened that Europebegan once more at the Neman River, and what exactly those briefs onKaliningrad’s main road were meant to symbolize.

Peopleof Königsberg, Europe is ready to stand up for you. The European idea is not anempty rhetoric; it is the essence of resistance. The so‑called Kaliningrad(Amberland) could become the first ringing bell – an emblem of Europe regainingits agency. If Moscow calls the region “inseparable”, Europe has a duty to makeit indisputable: a free territory, historically alien to Kremlin colonialism.Karaliaučius/Królewiec could launch a new strategy of reclamation rather thanretreat. Let me be blunt: we need a bold vision.

Europecannot stop at the 1991 borders. That would be too late, too timid. We needKarelia, Ingria, Smolensk, an independent Buryatia, a free Chechnya, a rebornOirat‑Kalmykia – and, of course, Kaliningrad‑Amberland (the Amber Coast), asthe first European territory to shrug off Moscow’s boot after 1992. Through itwe can break into the next chapter of European history: a post‑Russian worldfounded not on fear, but on beauty and the rule of law.