https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/p...lithuania-nato
A new Russian threat to target “the residents of Lithuania” has drawn a sharp reminder of the American pledge to fight alongside any NATO allies that might come under attack.
“Lithuania is a member of the NATO alliance,” State Department spokesman Ned Price emphasized. ”We stand by the commitments that we have made to the NATO alliance. That includes, of course, a commitment to Article 5: That is the bedrock of the NATO alliance.”
Price prefaced that warning with a dismissive remark about “Russian saber-rattling or Russian bluster.” The pairing would seem to reflect how unease about heightened military tensions around the war in Ukraine has been conditioned by the recognition that Russia is far likelier to use such threats for propaganda purposes than to risk a direct clash with the trans-Atlantic alliance.
“It seems like it's partially a Russian influence operation or psyops a little bit,” a senior European official told the Washington Examiner.
The latest controversy centers on Kaliningrad, a former Prussian territory on the Baltic Sea that Moscow acquired after the Second World War. This heavily militarized district long has presented a Russian thorn in the side of NATO, yet this bastion has remained partially dependent for supplies on railways that run across neighboring Lithuania — which announced last week that some of those deliveries would have to be curtailed in keeping with sanctions imposed by the European Union.
“Russia will, of course, respond to hostile actions of this kind,” Russian Security Council chief Nikolai Patrushev, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, said Tuesday. “The necessary measures ... will be introduced shortly. They will have serious negative consequences for residents of Lithuania.”
The Russian complaint belies the fact that the Lithuanian measures have been scheduled implicitly by EU sanctions imposed in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February. The transit ban, when the sanctions are implemented in total, will prevent the delivery by train of about half the commercial shipments to Kaliningrad — largely commodities such as cement and iron ore products.
“In accordance with EU sanctions, there are import and export restrictions that apply in relations with certain goods,” the European Union's high representative, Josep Borrell, a former Spanish politician who leads the bloc’s diplomatic corps, said Monday. “The accusation against Lithuania that it is implementing Lithuanian sanctions is false — pure propaganda.”
Patrushev’s outrage could also be a function of bad staff work by Russian officials, another European official surmised. “I think it sort of caught them a bit unaware,” a second European official said. “They were not probably aware that these sanctions are coming into force.”
Russia’s denunciation of Lithuania has a twofold purpose, in the assessment of the Europeans, insofar as it dovetails with Kremlin claims that the invasion of Ukraine was necessitated by NATO hostility — and channels domestic Russian dismay over the situation outward. Kaliningrad Gov. Anton Alikhanov declared the restrictions “a most serious violation ... of the right to free transit into and out of Kaliningrad region” in a statement published on social media amid a flare-up of local panic buying.
“People in Kaliningrad are genuinely worried. ... They feel like worse things are coming, and the Kremlin is of course under pressure to show that they are doing something and they’re in control, and they are reacting," the second European official said.
Russia has the option of redirecting those deliveries by sea or air, although the shift to air routes brings other risks.
“I’m not sure how long they have those planes if they don't have maintenance parts because their own civilian aircraft industry are very, very much reliant on reliant on Western competence,” the first senior European official said.
“So it will complicate, definitely, the traveling between the mainland and Konigsberg,” the official added, using the old German name for Kaliningrad.
How Russia goes about expressing its irritation, beyond press statements, remains to be seen — but the war in Ukraine is a form of reassurance.
“It's difficult for them to come up with a very clear response,” the second European official said. Lithuania’s economy is “not really dependent on Russia anymore,” and the Russian military doesn’t have “manpower waiting around” to threaten Lithuania.
“You never know what can happen, but to predict that it's going to result [in] some very disproportionate ... Russian reaction, including in the security sphere — I wouldn't say so,” the official concluded.
Originally Posted by tn1911
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