A politician in Russia allied with Vladimir Putin has issued a nuclear threat to the West if it takes hostile action against the Kaliningrad enclave bordering NATO.
Sergey Mironov, leader of the party “A Just Russia” which is part of the systemic opposition sympathetic to Kremlin foreign policy, responded to a report in German paper Bild that Germany’s armed forces (Bundeswehr) were planning for a scenario in which Russia would attack the alliance.
Citing a classified document, the paper said Germany was preparing for an attack by Moscow on the alliance’s eastern flank.
It outlined a “path to conflict” between Russia and NATO in claims that have not been independently verified, have been denied by Moscow and about which Newsweek has contacted the German foreign ministry and NATO.
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Bild predicted that tensions starting in February would escalate to “border conflicts” by December in the “Suwalki corridor” between Belarus and Kaliningrad along the Polish-Lithuanian border.
But Mironov said in an emailed statement to Newsweek that motives for the report were to sow “panic” and “anti-Russian hysteria” in Europe and express a desire among some in Germany to see “the return of East Prussia,” referring to Kaliningrad’s pre-Russian status.
“But these dreams are not destined to come true. Any attempt to block or even attack the Kaliningrad region will inevitably lead to a military clash with Russia,” he said.
Formerly known as Konigsberg, Kaliningrad was part of the German Empire and joined the Soviet Union under the Potsdam Agreement of August 1, 1945.
As its most westerly outpost and bordered on three sides by NATO member states, Kaliningrad is one of Russia’s most strategically sensitive regions, and is the base of the Baltic Sea Fleet between Poland and Lithuania on NATO’s eastern flank.
Mironov, who was chairman of Russia’s Federation Council from 2001 to 2011, said that any Western move on the region was “a real red line, or rather a red button, by clicking on which the West will inevitably force Russia to take retaliatory measures.”
“As a nuclear power, it will take all available forces and means to defend its territory,” he said. “These protection measures will apply to every Russian region, regardless of whether the West recognizes it as such or not.”
In September 2022, Putin announced the annexation of the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson, which Moscow does not fully control.
Repeating Kremlin rhetoric about its reasons for invading Ukraine, Mironov added that Russian forces were acting in “retaliation” to NATO actions and to oust the “neo Nazis in Ukraine.”
“Russia did not intend and is not going to attack the members of the alliance,” he said.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
