Vladimir Putin has said Russia would turn to every weapon it has if its Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad were attacked directly. The Russian president made the remarks in a wide-ranging speech at the Valdai foreign policy forum, after a week in which Moscow accused Nato of preparing to blockade the territory, which borders Lithuania and Poland.
Putin said a direct attack on Kaliningrad, or possibly other Russian territory, would immediately put the use of all the country’s arms on the agenda. He pointed to Nato naval manoeuvres in the Baltic Sea as a serious threat to the exclave and said Russia was ready to use all means, including nuclear, if it faced a blockade. He also insisted that Moscow was “not threatening anyone”, presenting his comments as a reply to Western leaders who have said Russia is preparing for war in 2029 or 2030.
Nato has tried to lower the temperature. Secretary General Mark Rutte said on Wednesday that none of the alliance’s exercises or activities posed any threat to Moscow and that the Kremlin’s messaging was not helpful. Western officials have long worried less about an attack from Kaliningrad itself than about the Suwalki Gap, the short stretch of land between the exclave and Russia’s ally Belarus, as a route for any attempt to take Lithuanian territory. Lithuania’s prime minister told the BBC last week that the country had drawn up evacuation plans, and thousands of Nato troops are stationed there.
The warning comes amid a rise in hybrid incidents blamed on Russia, particularly in Poland and the Baltic states. Poland said last week that a Russian helicopter had crossed into its territory next to Kaliningrad, while Lithuania said its population felt constantly threatened, partly because of drones entering its airspace. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Germany was preparing for further hybrid attacks after a drone carrying explosives was found in August on the tarmac at Leipzig airport, close to Ukrainian cargo planes.
On Ukraine, Putin again blamed the West for the war he launched in February 2022 and described Russian strikes on Ukrainian economic targets as retaliation for attacks on Russian oil refineries and ships in the Black Sea. He acknowledged that the refinery strikes had cost Russia about 1% of its GDP. He also warned that automation and digitalisation were turning warfare into a game, a trend he said was dragging humanity back towards barbarity.
