Well before Vladimir Putin sent his war machine over the border into Ukraine, the Russian president and his proxies were fulminating about Nato surrounding his country, establishing hostile military bases in its backyard and boxing it into a corner.
Ukraine’s ever-closer relationship with the west and the prospect of it joining Nato was one of Russia’s great fears, along with resentment that Nato had attracted countries that were once firmly within the old Soviet sphere of influence. So the decision this week by Lithuania, one of the Baltic states, to enforce sanctions on certain goods moving between Russia and Kaliningrad, a small Russian “exclave” wedged between Poland and Lithuania on the Baltic Coast, has raised the temperature a notch.
As you’d expect, Russia’s rhetoric has been typically robust, threatening “appropriate measures” that would have a “serious negative impact on the population of Lithuania”. Moscow calls it a “blockade” – which has a specific meaning under the Geneva Convention, being prohibited if it is directly about starving a population. But, as Stephen Hall – who researches the post-Soviet space at the University of Bath – points out, this is no blockade. Non-sanctioned goods (including food and vital supplies) can still pass freely from Russia to Kaliningrad through Lithuania as can people. But reality has not played a huge part in Russia’s statements about the war to date.
