Kaliningrad in the European Security Architecture after the Annexation of Crimea

Abstract

Following Russia’s aggression towards Ukraine and the occupation of Crimea, there are few who would doubt Moscow’s endeavours to influence the balance of power in the pan-Baltic region as well. As often as not, such endeavours tend to be analysed after they occur. Russia’s potential to exercise this kind of influence using the Kaliningrad factor was recalled as if apropos of nothing. This is cause to suspect that academic research has so far failed to properly consider Kaliningrad as a geostrategic factor. Then there are the questions: What is the course of the transformation of the geopolitical status of the Russian Federation’s Kaliningrad (Konigsberg) region? What is the role that Moscow has earmarked for the exclave within the European security architecture? And is it a merely regional role? One way to find out the answers is by verifying the governance model applied by the parent country to the oblast, which is convincingly grounded on the concept of a geopolitical hostage. Moscow is tightening its grip on the social, economic and political processes in Kaliningrad. By using financial subsidies, infrastructural projects and laws to modify the status of the exclave, it is trying to stabilise the socio-economic situation in the exclave, making every effort to ensure Kaliningrad’s viability under isolation and transit restriction (termination). Political control is assured by Moscow’s direct dummies within the exclave’s administration and United Russia’s dominance at so-called elected institutions. After the war with Georgia, which is to say roughly since 2009, Russia has taken focused steps to rapidly modernise and reorganise its military. As we analyse the measures Russia deploys to develop its military presence in the Western Military District, we can say that in 2015-2016 Moscow attained the complete superiority of conventional weaponry over NATO. The Kaliningrad region played a vital role in that process. Both implicitly and for all practical purposes, the exclave became a factor to perform the function of Russia’s military bastion. Strategically speaking, this is the region’s old role given new life. Kaliningrad has become the heart of Russia’s A2/AD ‘bubble’, raising new challenges for the security of the Scandinavian countries, Finland, the Baltic states and Poland, ergo Western Europe. Kaliningrad has turned into a diminishing factor in terms of Belarus’ geopolitical role. The consistent re-militarisation of Kaliningrad affects the regional states and transatlantic relations alike. Moscow’s goal is for the Kaliningrad factor to be of strategic importance in the balance of power dialogue with the West, and the US in particular. Moscow is being frank that the purpose of a remilitarised Kaliningrad in the Baltic region and the Kuril Islands in the Far East is to reduce the geostrategic influence of the US and increase Russia’s security beyond the perimeter of its borders.