The Ukraine War is a storm in a tea cup when compared to what is brewing nearby. A “chicken’s neck” within NATO with hostile Russia-controlled territory on either side of it is likely to trigger a widespread conflagration engulfing almost the whole of Europe and possibly the US and Japan too with Iran only too happy to fish in troubled waters. The Suwalki Gap is the 65-km border between Lithuania to the north and Poland to the south. At one end of it lies Putin’s puppet Lukashenko’s Belarus and at the other end is the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea. Kaliningrad was not Russian territory till 1945; it was an overly generous and unwise concession by the allies at the Potsdam Conference that is now haunting Europe. Kaliningrad was German territory throughout its history and carried the name Königsberg. The Treaty of Versailles at the end of World War I detached it from the rest of Germany and converted it into a German exclave. German demands for a road and rail corridor through Poland were resisted by the victorious and that rancour was one of the pillars of Hitler’s rise. He used this disconnect of Germany from Königsberg as the major pretext for the invasion of Poland in September 1939 from which snowballed the events leading to WWII. Near the end of the War, the USSR occupied Königsberg and renamed it Kaliningrad and insisted on retaining it as Soviet territory to which the US acquiesced. Perhaps Truman felt that ejecting the USSR from this territory was not worth the trouble. Even if it could become part of Germany again, it would have been part of East Germany that was under Soviet occupation and which became a Communist state as the German Democratic Republic, under the firm control of the USSR. Whatever be the reason for the American acquiescence, it changed the geopolitics of the Baltics in a way that the Americans would not have imagined.

The 700 years of the existence of the territory as Königsberg were quickly erased by the Russians through radical postwar social engineering. The 300,000 German Königsberger were expelled over the next two years starting in 1945; they carried the name with them. One of the well-known ones was Otto H. Königsberger, the creator of what came to be known as Action Planning for Urban Development, the theme of the Development Planning Institute at London University, where the present writer met him in 1985. Otto had remained an Indian citizen from 1950 till 1991. He was the Chief Architect and Planner for the cities of Mysore and Bhubaneshwar. Coming back to Otto’s home place, now Kaliningrad, the Soviets replaced the German population with Russian settlers and it is now completely Russian, a Russian Oblast or a province. Till the Soviet Union existed, it was fully connected through the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic while Poland too, being part of the Warsaw Pact, presented no problem. Even the two states to the north of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were part of the USSR and thus the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea was fully under Soviet control from Leningrad (St. Petersburg) in the North to the border of East and West Germany. With the collapse of the Soviet Union came the independence of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia and a unified Germany, all of whom became NATO members, making a huge dent in the Russian presence in the Baltic Sea. The last nail was the accession of Finland and Sweden to Nato, leaving Russia with only St. Petersburg in the north and Kaliningrad in the South. 

Russia heavily garrisoned Kaliningrad with close to 20,000 troops, including the 11th Army Corps, the 336th Guards Naval Infantry Brigade, nuclear capable Iskander-M ballistic missiles, Bastion-P anti-ship missile systems, 132nd Mixed Aviation Division, 44th Air Defence Division with S-400 Triumf SAMs, SU-30SM, SU-24 and SU-27 fighter aircrafts, in a territory of just 223 sq. km. and a million population. The Russian Baltic Fleet is headquartered at the ice-free port of Baltiysk in Kaliningrad comprising 52 warships in addition to Kilo-class and Lada-class submarines. With the Russian might at Kaliningrad, particularly after Belarus got firmly ensconced in Putin’s camp, the Suwalki Gap constitutes a huge headache for NATO; Russia can attack from both sides of it and cut-off the three smaller NATO members to the north - Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Relief came from the Ukraine War; Russia had to shift substantial troops and hardware from Kaliningrad and the Baltic Sea due to high losses in this war. Simultaneously, NATO, emboldened by the inclusion of Finland and Sweden, has increased its presence around Kaliningrad. On 22 October 2026, defencematters.eu carried an article, “Kaliningrad’s Russian air fleet faces growing pressure from NATO surveillance and wartime demands.” A Russian SU-30 fighter aircraft crashed in Kaliningrad on October 21 and the article said that “Russian aircraft operating around Kaliningrad regularly encounter NATO fighters conducting air-policing missions.” Maintenance of Russian equipment is becoming a problem because NATO airspace has been closed for  Russian aircraft. 

The land link for Kaliningrad is a rail corridor mainly through Lithuania but also through Latvia and Estonia and Russia now faces the threat of disruption of this link. Europe and Russia use different gauges and Russian lines running through NATO countries are the only 150-years old, Czar-era 1520 mm Russian gauges there. Nordic Defence Review’s article, “Breaking with the Russian Gauge – Baltic States set to remove old rails to the East” says that at a Meeting in Riga on 4 December 2025, the leaders of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia discussed dismantling the old Russian gauge tracks that cross their eastern borders as part of a broader package of anti-invasion tactics. This will completely isolate Kaliningrad and will choke Belarus trade too. Finland, which uses the Russian gauge, a legacy of the Russian rule in the 19th century, has cut-off almost all rail traffic from Russia and has announced plans to change the rail gauge to the EU standard. The planned rail disconnect has been done already in the electricity sector. On 10 February 2025, Reuters reported, “Baltic States switch to European power grid, ending Russia ties.” It said that Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia have completed a switch from Russia’s electricity grid to the EU’s system. The European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said to the three heads of governments at the ceremony marking the occasion, “These chains of power linking you to hostile neighbours will be a thing of the past.” 

Both Nato and Russia are gradually inching towards hostile breakdown on the issue of the Suwalki gap and Kaliningrad. The diversion of resources from Kaliningrad to the Ukraine War looks like an opportunity to NATO. They are emboldened by the fact that while Russia claims that it attacked Ukraine to prevent it from joining NATO, it did nothing, being bogged down in war, when Finland and Seden joined NATO in spite of issuing threats against the idea of such accession earlier. All these events have the effect of changing the status of Kaliningrad from a fortress that controlled events in the Baltics to one that has the potential of making this region more volatile. If the rail link is cut off, an embattled Kaliningrad can rely on support only from St. Petersburg and that port freezes in the winter. 

The Fundamental of State Policy of the Russian Federation in the Field of Nuclear Deterrence” decreed by Putin on 19 November 2024 says, “Aggression against the Russian Federation and/or its allies by any non-nuclear state with the participation or support of a nuclear state shall be considered as a joint attack by them” and it shall invoke nuclear deterrence. One can only hope that NATO is not tempted to try to take Kaliningrad, putting Putin in the unenviable position where his only option is nuclear.  / DAILY WORLD /