Russian ex-president vows retaliation against Kaliningrad blockade

The former president promises tough retaliatory measures to Lithuania for Kaliningrad blockade.

Moscow s response to the Lithuanian ban on Kaliningrad transit could be tough enough to cut off oxygen to the Baltic countries, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev warned.

Kaliningrad is a small Russian exclave nestled between Lithuania and Poland. The national rail operator of Vilnius suspended the transit of sanctioned goods between Kaliningrad and the rest of Russia earlier this month, citing instructions from Brussels.

In an interview with the Argumenty i Fakty newspaper, Medvedev claimed that the EU did not insist on imposing restrictions and thus Lithuania obsequiously bowed to American benefactors, showing its moronic russophobic attitudes. Medvedev promised that Moscow would respond to the transit ban because it was part of a proxy war unleashed by the West against Russia. He said that many of the possible retaliatory steps would be of an economic nature and would be capable of cutting off oxygen to the Baltic neighbors who have taken hostile actions. Medvedev, now deputy chairman of the Russian National Security Council, stressed that Russia could also apply asymmetric measures.

Such an escalation is a bad decision. The standard of living in Lithuania, by European standards, is just beggarly, and those who suffer from it are the ordinary citizens, according to Medvedev.

His remarks came two days after Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda said that his country would maintain the ban and that there cannot be any corridors nor can there be any appeasement of Russia in response to the Kremlin's threats. The EU's top diplomat, Josep Borrell, earlier stated that the bloc was not seeking to impose a blockade on Russia's Kaliningrad Region and would review its sanctions guidelines to avoid blocking traffic into and out of the exclave. He stated that Lithuania's actions were aimed at preventing the circumvention of anti-Russian sanctions imposed over the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.