The head of the Kremlin’s security council has threatened the “population of Lithuania” in an escalation of the dispute over the Lithuanian railway’s refusal to allow some goods to cross the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad.
After a meeting in the region, which lies between Lithuania and Poland, 800 miles from Moscow, Nikolai Patrushev increased the rhetoric by threatening “serious consequences.”
“Russia will certainly respond to these hostile actions,” Patrushev said. “Appropriate measures … will be taken in the near future … Their consequences will have a serious negative impact on the population of Lithuania.”
Over the weekend, the Lithuanian state railway had told Russian customers that it could no longer transport steel or iron ore across EU territory to Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea.
Goods banned from entering the EU under sanctions introduced after Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine include Russian coal, metals, building materials and advanced technology. Just under half of the goods crossing Lithuania on about 100 train journeys each month are subject to EU sanctions, although there are different dates for their entry into force.
The oil ban will not apply until December as part of a compromise between the 27 EU member states.
Activists protesting in front of the Lithuanian embassy in Moscow on June 21 against the sidewalks of the Kaliningrad railway display signs saying “Closing the border? Our army has no visas” and ‘Lithuania in line for democratization’ Photo: Maxim Shipenkov / EPA
The announcement of the railway caused some panic purchases in Kaliningrad and an outraged response from Moscow, where officials accused Lithuania of breaching the 2004 traffic agreements.
The European Commission has said Lithuania is acting legally, although EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on Monday it would “disapprove” in what appeared to be an attempt to pull the punch out of the dispute.
Patrushev, one of Putin’s closest aides, had been speaking after a meeting in Kaliningrad, while on Tuesday earlier Russia’s Foreign Ministry convened EU Ambassador to Moscow Markus Ederer on the “anti-Russian restrictions”.
“The inadmissibility of these actions, which violate the relevant legal and political obligations of the European Union and lead to an escalation of tensions, has been noted,” the ministry said in a statement.
Speaking shortly after the meeting, Ederer said he had called on the Russian government to “keep calm” and “resolve this issue diplomatically,” Russia’s Tass news agency reported.
Kaliningrad, home to Russia’s Baltic Sea Fleet, has a population of about 500,000. He was captured from Nazi Germany by the Red Army in April 1945 and ceded to the Soviet Union at the end of the war.