Putin arrived in Kaliningrad and will discuss the issue of transit through Lithuania
“Of course, Kaliningrad is a very important region of Russia… The complex situation related to payments to Europe will certainly be discussed,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian media before the visit.
During the visit, on the occasion of the beginning of the academic year, V. Putin met with schoolchildren of the Kaliningrad region and answered questions on various topics, from the economy, space exploration to the Kremlin’s military intervention in Ukraine.
“The mission of our soldiers is to stop this war [Donbase]to protect the people and, of course, the new Russia,” V. Putin said in television reports.
According to him, “the creation of an anti-Russian enclave, which poses a threat to our country, has begun on the territory of current Ukraine.”
Putin’s visit to Kaliningrad comes amid tensions between Moscow and Brussels after the European Union imposed Russian-led sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine.
In June, Russia got involved in a dispute with Lithuania, after Vilnius restricted the transit of sanctioned goods by railways from the Russian mainland to Kaliningrad.
After threats and protests from Moscow, Brussels declared that Lithuania must allow the transit of Russian goods, except for weapons.
earlier this month, Russia announced that it had deployed three planes armed with Kinzhal missiles, which Moscow calls hypersonic weapons, in the Kaliningrad region. The Russian Defense Ministry stated that these aircraft are on “round-the-clock combat duty”.
The Kaliningrad region, which was taken from Germany by the Red Army towards the end of World War II, was separated from the main part of Russia when the Soviet Union collapsed and Lithuania became an independent state.
This Baltic Sea exclave, sandwiched between NATO members Lithuania and Poland, is heavily militarized and has no land border with Russia.