Publication

So what’s happened to Kaliningrad Oblast? With the fall of the USSR, it was initially supposed to become a bridge of cooperation, a Russian gateway to Europe, or even a Baltic Hong Kong. Well that didn’t happen. Instead, the enclave deteriorated into a rusty military bastion that’s long been dependent on handouts from Moscow. And what about now? As the author of this essay sees it, the oblast has become nothing less than a “Russian embarrassment.” Here’s why.