Earlier in the month, a Lithuanian MP caused a stir by questioning the Russian claim over the Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad.
Lithuanian MP Linas Balsys, a representative of the Green Party, said at a conference titled ‘World in 2017: The View from Vilnius’ that Russia had lost legal rights to the Kaliningrad region after what he described as the “annexation” of Crimea and the status of the exclave, which is part of the former German province of East Prussia, needed consideration at the international level, reported Russian State News Agency TASS.
“Time has run out for Kaliningrad,” Balsys alleged. “Kaliningrad was not given to Russia in perpetuity, either at the Potsdam Conference or at Helsinki. It was [only] said that the region would be put under Soviet administration until a final European peace agreement is signed.”
Jasa Jakilaitiene, the official spokesperson for the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry ended any speculation regarding the official Lithuanian position by saying the tiny Baltic nation had no intent to question Russia’s sovereignty over the region. For its part, Russian analysts raised the possibility of seizing the Lithuanian port of Klaipeda on the Baltic Sea if Russia’s claim was threatened.
