Small piece of Russia & Nord pipeline

[saaby93]

What's this small piece of Russia between Poland and Lithuania?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-58301099
and why if the article is about Ukraine , does Ukraine not figure on the map?

[Wills2]

Ukraine features politically not geographically, that's Kaliningrad.

[PeteinSQ]

It's an exclave called Kaliningrad, used to be Koningsberg until the end of WW2 when all the Germans were expelled and the place had pretty much been entirely destroyed.

[saaby93]

PeteinSQ said:

It's an exclave called Kaliningrad, used to be Koningsberg until the end of WW2 when all the Germans were expelled and the place had pretty much been entirely destroyed.

Why was it full of Germans not Poles or Lithuanians

[DocJock]

It was the capital of Prussia and still part of Germany at the start of WW2

[Tom Logan]

That takes me back a bit, I worked on Nord Stream 1 start to finish.

Had some good times in Turku and Visby when we were weathered in, no heli flights The Black Sheep in Visby was an excellent watering hole.

Happy days.

[phope]

saaby93 said:

PeteinSQ said:

It's an exclave called Kaliningrad, used to be Koningsberg until the end of WW2 when all the Germans were expelled and the place had pretty much been entirely destroyed.

Why was it full of Germans not Poles or Lithuanians

Makes much more sense when you look at the borders of Germany and the Prussian states after WW1 and before WW2

https://www.quora.com/What-was-the-territory-of-Ge...

Free City of Danzig ended up in Polish territory after WW2 and was renamed Gdansk as well as Poland's borders being shifted significantly westwards after the Soviets took a portion of previously Polish land in the east

Edited by phope on Monday 23 August 20:33

[saaby93]

video showing similar here with naff musak
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LwsmzHxMktA

[Meeten-5dulx]

Political hot potato and a large component of the massive increase in you home energy bills.
Nordstream 2 was meant to bring gas to Europe but this is caught up in a political st storm regarding transit routes….. hopefully it will be resolved as Gasprom said they would be flowing some in q4.

Don’t know much about geography but the above sounds a good explanation.

[vonuber]

saaby93 said:

Why was it full of Germans not Poles or Lithuanians

A lot of Germans were expelled at the end of WW2.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_and_expulsion...
Looking at around 12 million or so expelled from there they lived for centuries as part of Prussia etc and forced to go to the new Germany, which lost most of its eastern territory to Poland.

[V88Dicky]

vonuber said:

saaby93 said:

Why was it full of Germans not Poles or Lithuanians

A lot of Germans were expelled at the end of WW2.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_and_expulsion...
Looking at around 12 million or so expelled from there they lived for centuries as part of Prussia etc and forced to go to the new Germany, which lost most of its eastern territory to Poland.

I’m sure I read somewhere that it was offered back to Germany after reunification, but they turned it down?

[phope]

allegedly, but both the Germans and Russians deny it - Germany waived all claims to former lands in the East as part of the final treaty for German reunification

It was also home to a large Soviet naval fleet in the Cold War, and I suspect it now has too much value & importance now for Russia to have a "warm" water naval port closer to the North Sea than their northerly Baltic ports

It's one of those places I'd kinda like to visit just from a historical point of view, but it was also closed to all foreigners for many years in the Cold War.

[Puggit]

Kaliningrad is vital to Russia as the only ice-free port on the Atlantic.

Of course, in the times of the USSR it was connected to Russia via Soviet soil (Lithuania now).