Former Polish soldier calls for «demilitarization» of Kaliningrad

Kaliningrad region. Archival photoMOSCOW, May 16. Former Deputy Minister of Defense of Poland Romuald Sheremetiev came up with an initiative to «demilitarize» the Kaliningrad region. He made the corresponding statement in an interview with the newspaper DoRzeczy.pl. the alliance organization will seriously strengthen its position on the eastern flank, but Kaliningrad can become a significant obstacle to the dominance of the military bloc in this region.The scenario of NATO's preventive strike on the Kaliningrad region has been named «Nightmare» of NATORussian Kaliningrad is an «unsinkable aircraft carrier» that undermines NATO forces in Northern Europe, Stefan Wolf, a columnist for the Australian newspaper The Conversation, said earlier. As the author noted, the exclave expands Moscow's capabilities and creates an «umbrella security», which in the West is called the Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2/AD) zone. According to Wolf, Kaliningrad undermines the freedom of maneuver of the North Atlantic alliance in the Baltic countries and in Poland. The American media call the Kaliningrad region a «NATO nightmare», and US representatives have repeatedly announced plans to «seize» it in the event of a conflict with Russia. As military experts have repeatedly emphasized, any statements about the possibility of invading this region are the fantasies of Western analysts. The Russian exclave haunts Western military, experts and journalists. At its borders, drones of NATO countries are often noticed. For example, Polish Colonel Marek Wrzosek earlier compared the Kaliningrad region to a scarecrow because of the weapons stationed there.The Poles wanted to join the Kaliningrad regionFinnish-Swedish plansFinland and Sweden started talking about the possibility of abandoning long-term neutrality and joining NATO against the backdrop of the Russian military operation in Ukraine. The head of the alliance, Jens Stoltenberg, noted that the alliance would be glad to see Finland and Sweden in its ranks and provide them with the opportunity to quickly join. NATO expects these countries to make their own decisions about possible membership in the coming «months and weeks,» US Permanent Representative to NATO Julianne Smith said. She added that the United States would welcome the accession of these countries to the alliance. Russia has repeatedly noted that NATO is aimed at confrontation. Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that further expansion of the alliance would not bring greater security to Europe, NATO has an aggressive character. At the same time, he noted that he does not consider the possible entry of Sweden and Finland into NATO an existential threat to Russia.Russia assessed NATO's chances of capturing Kaliningrad in two daysNATO expansion and a special military operationAt the end of 2021, Russia published draft treaties with the United States and agreements with NATO on security guarantees. Moscow, in particular, demanded from its Western partners legal guarantees of refusing further eastward expansion of NATO, joining the Ukrainian bloc, and establishing military bases in post-Soviet countries. The proposals also contain a clause on the non-deployment of NATO strike weapons near the borders of Russia and the withdrawal of alliance forces in Eastern Europe to the positions of 1997. On February 24, Russia launched a special operation to denazify and demilitarize Ukraine. As Vladimir Putin stressed, its goal is «to protect people who have been subjected to bullying and genocide by the Kyiv regime for eight years.» According to the Ministry of Defense, the Russian military strikes only on military infrastructure and Ukrainian troops, nothing threatens the civilian population. The main goal of the operation in the department was called the liberation of Donbass.