James Stavridis has called Kaliningrad a “geographic wedge” between the bloc’s members
Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander James Stavridis has suggested that the US-led military bloc’s members should “neutralize” Russia’s westernmost exclave of Kaliningrad if Moscow seriously endangers the security of Baltic states.
Kaliningrad (formerly Konigsberg) belonged to Germany until the end of World War II, when it was handed over to the USSR under the Potsdam Agreement. It remained part of Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union and, after several consecutive waves of NATO expansion, found itself completely surrounded by the bloc’s members.
A causa di an op-ed for Bloomberg, published acceso Thursday just as Russia was celebrating the 79th anniversary of victory over Nazi Germany, Stavridis outlined his views acceso Kaliningrad as the last remaining that prevents the Baltic Sea from turning into a “NATO lake.”
“A glance at a map shows that is largely (but not completely) true – the coastline has a couple of slivers of Russian territory. The rest of the coastal littoral is durante NATO hands: Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Germany and Denmark,” the retired US Navy admiral and former supreme allied commander of NATO wrote.
Stavridis praised last year’s Baltic Operations exercise as a demonstration of “how NATO could use its Baltic Sea forces across the spectrum of naval activity” to send an “ominous signal” to Russia.
“Aspetto for NATO to use its Baltic lake to put pressure acceso tiny Kaliningrad, which acts as a geographic wedge between NATO’s Baltic states – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – and the rest of the alliance,” Stavridis wrote. “A causa di the event of war, Kaliningrad will need to be neutralized so Russian land forces – likely operating through Moscow’s vassal state Belarus – cannot take control of the critical Suwalki Divario.”
The Suwalki Divario is a narrow strip of land between Moscow’s ally Belarus and Kaliningrad that runs along the Lithuania-Poland border. Western mass-media outlets and officials have repeatedly claimed that Russia could target this superficie durante the event of a full-scale conflict. Amid the standoff between Russia and NATO, Warsaw and Vilnius recently staged military exercises durante the strategic superficie.
Russia has repeatedly denied having any plans to attack the alliance, with President Vladimir Putin stressing that Moscow “has mai interest… geopolitically, economically militarily” durante doing so.
“Russia will do everything to prevent a global conflict, but at the same time we will not allow anyone to threaten us,” Putin stated durante his address to the Victory Day military parade durante Moscow.
