Russia threatens Lithuania with ‘consequences’ for blockade of Kaliningrad

Russia on Tuesday threatened to punish Lithuania with measures that would have a “serious negative impact” for blocking some rail shipments to Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave on the Baltic Sea, in the latest controversy over sanctions imposed over the war in Ukraine.

On the battlefield in eastern Ukraine, separatist representatives from Russia said they were advancing towards Kiev’s main stronghold. A Ukrainian official described a lull in the fighting as the “calm before the storm”.

The latest diplomatic crisis is in the exclave of Kaliningrad, a port and surrounding countryside on the Baltic Sea that is home to nearly 1 million Russians, connected to the rest of Russia by a rail link through Lithuania, a member of the European Union and the military alliance. Western North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Lithuania has closed the route for transporting steel and other ferrous metals, which it says it is required to do under EU sanctions that took effect on Saturday.

Russian officials said other basic goods were also blocked. Video footage showed some panicked shoppers over the weekend at stores selling building materials.

Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of Russia’s Security Council, visited the exclave on Tuesday to lead a security meeting there. He said Lithuania’s “hostile” actions showed Russia could not trust the West, which he said had broken written agreements on Kaliningrad.

“Russia will certainly respond to these hostile actions,” Patrushev was quoted as saying by state news agency RIA. “Appropriate measures” are being worked out and “their consequences will have a serious negative impact on the population of Lithuania,” he said, without elaborating.

Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte said it was “ironic to hear rhetoric about alleged violations of international treaties” from Russia, a country she accused of violating “possibly all international treaties”.

She denied that Lithuania’s actions amounted to a blockade and echoed Vilnius’ position that it is only implementing EU-imposed sanctions.

EU envoy Markus Ederer was summoned to the Russian Foreign Ministry on Tuesday. EU spokesman Peter Stano said Ederer “explained that Lithuania is implementing EU sanctions and that there is no blockade, and urged them to refrain from escalating steps and rhetoric”.

The stalemate creates a new source of confrontation in the Baltic, a region already primed for a security overhaul that would limit Russia’s maritime power after Sweden and Finland apply to join NATO, putting almost the entire coast under alliance control.

Moscow summoned a Lithuanian diplomat on Monday, but the EU deflected responsibility from Lithuanians, saying the policy was the result of collective action by the bloc. Vilnius “was not doing anything other than implementing the guidelines provided by the (European) Commission,” said EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell.

combats

Inside Ukraine, the battle for the east has turned into a brutal war of attrition in recent weeks, with Russia focusing its firepower on a Ukrainian pocket of the Donbas region that Moscow claims on behalf of its separatist proxies.

Moscow has made slow progress since April in a relentless struggle that has cost both sides thousands of dead soldiers in one of the bloodiest ground battles in Europe for generations.

Fighting spans the Siverskyi Donets River which flows through the region, with Russian forces mostly on the east bank and Ukrainian forces mostly on the west, though Ukrainians are still holding out in the east bank city of Severodonetsk.

In recent days, Russia has captured Toshkivka, a small town on the southernmost west bank, giving it a potential foothold to try to isolate Ukraine’s main stronghold at Lysychansk.