Russia summoned the European Union’s ambassador in Moscow on Tuesday, fuming over what it calls an illegal rail blockade of a Russian outpost on the Baltic Sea, the latest stand-off over sanctions imposed over the war in Ukraine.
On the ground in eastern Ukraine, Russia’s separatist proxies said they were advancing towards Kyiv’s main battlefield bastion. A Ukrainian official described a lull in fighting there as the “calm before the storm”.
The latest diplomatic crisis is over the Kaliningrad enclave, a port and surrounding countryside on the Baltic Sea that is home to nearly a million Russians, connected to the rest of Russia by a rail link through EU- and NATO-member Lithuania.
Lithuania has shut the route for basic goods including construction materials, metals and coal, which it says it is required to do under EU sanctions that took effect on Saturday.
Russia calls the move an illegal blockade and has threatened unspecified retaliation against Lithuania.
EU envoy Markus Ederer appeared at the Russian Foreign Ministry on Tuesday. EU spokesperson Peter Stano said Ederer “explained that Lithuania is implementing EU sanctions and there is no blockade, and asked them to refrain from escalatory steps and rhetoric”.
The standoff creates a new source of confrontation on the Baltic, a region already set for a security overhaul that would hem in Russia’s sea power as Sweden and Finland apply to join NATO and put nearly the whole coast under alliance control.
Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of Russia’s powerful Security Council, arrived in Kaliningrad to hold a council meeting, Russia’s RIA state news agency reported.
Moscow had summoned a Lithuanian diplomat on Monday, but the EU has deflected responsibility from the Lithuanians, saying the policy was a result of collective action by the bloc. Vilnius was “doing nothing else than implementing the guidelines provided by the (European) Commission”, said EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell.
