Lithuania’s decision to ban the transit of certain goods between Russia and its isolated exclave of Kaliningrad has provoked wrath among top officials in Moscow, and even a threat of retaliation against the European nation. Kaliningrad shares land borders with two NATO nations, Lithuania and Poland, but not Russia. Captured from Nazi Germany by the Soviet Red Army in 1945 and later ceded to the Soviet Union, the Russian territory is home to about 500,000 people.

While it is surrounded on two sides by NATO nations, it’s a strategically vital patch of ground for Moscow as it provides Russia’s only Baltic Sea coastline. It is home to the Russian military’s Baltic Fleet, and a number of advanced nuclear-capable Iskander missile installations.

But the isolated patch of ground relies on its rail connection to the rest of Russia for the majority of its civilian imports. That rail line runs through Lithuania and then neighboring Belarus, which is a Russian ally.

A map shows Russia’s Kaliningrad Oblast, lower left, sandwiched between NATO and EU nations Poland and Lithuania. Getty/iStockphoto

On June 18, European Union member Lithuania prohibited the transit of all goods subject to EU sanctions imposed on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine via the rail link. That includes coal, metals, electronics, and construction materials.

Nikolai Patrushev, the Secretary-General of Russia’s Security Council and one of the most powerful figures in President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle, called Lithuania’s actions “hostile” and “in violation of the international law” during a visit to Kaliningrad on Tuesday.

“Russia will certainly respond to such hostile actions,” Patrushev was quoted as saying by Russian state media. “The consequences will have a serious negative impact on the population of Lithuania.”

In response, Lithuania said it was simply complying with EU decisions and stressed that the transit of passengers and non-sanctioned goods “continues uninterrupted.” 

Anton Alikhanov, the Governor of Kaliningrad, said the ban was affecting about half of all imports to the territory.

“We consider this to be a most serious violation… of the right to free transit into and out of the Kaliningrad region,” he said in a video address posted on the Telegram messaging app the day after Lithuania’s announcement.

Videos posted on social media last weekend by residents in Kalingrad appeared to show panic buying at stores.

Lithuanian authorities have mocked the complaints from Russian officials, saying no “blockade” is being imposed on Russia’s European exclave.

“It’s ironic to hear rhetoric about alleged violations of international treaties from a country which has violated possibly every single international treaty,” Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte told reporters, according to the Reuters news agency.

Photographs of Russia’s war in Ukraine are displayed as part of an exhibition at the railway station in Vilnius, Lithuania, March 25, 2022, where transit trains from Moscow to Kaliningrad make a stop over. The exhibition is intended to give transiting Russian travelers a true picture of the conflict.  PETRAS MALUKAS/AFP/Getty

Western officials have been quick to point to Russia’s blockade of all ports along Ukraine’s southern Black Sea coast, which has interrupted global food supplies. The United Nations has warned that blockade could lead to a prolonged global food crisis.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell cautioned Moscow against any escalation over Lithuania’s enforcement of the bloc’s sanctions.

“We are in a precautionary mood,” Borrell said Monday. “But Lithuania is not guilty. It is not implementing national [unilateral] sanctions. It is not implementing their will. Whatever they are doing has been the consequence of the previous consultation with the [European] Commission.”

With its Baltic Sea port that remains ice-free year-round, Kaliningrad had provided Russia a viable way to try and bypass the myriad international sanctions imposed against it over the Ukraine war. But the restrictions on goods moving through Lithuania will greatly limit that prospect.

A cargo train from the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad moves to the border railway station in Kybartai, about 124 miles west of Lithuania’s capital Vilnius, June 22, 2022. Lithuania has defended its decision to bar rail transit from Russia to its Baltic Sea exclave of goods under European Union sanctions. Mindaugas Kulbis/AP

Both the Kremlin and Russia’s Foreign Ministry echoed Patrushev’s threats of “practical” retaliation against Lithuania, but Moscow hasn’t yet indicated what that will entail.

Russian lawmaker Leonid Slutsky told state news agency RIA Novosti on Wednesday that Moscow could, as a potential option, disconnect Lithuania from the regional power grid.  

On Wednesday, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda told Reuters that his country was ready for Russia to retaliate by severing its connection to the BRELL power grid, but he added that he did not expect a military confrontation over the transit ban.

Three decades after they severed ties with the Soviet Union, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia still depend on Russia for much of their power supply. Last year, however, Lithuania established a way to connect to the continental European grid via Poland, lowering its dependence on Moscow.

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По его словам, решение по ответным мерам из-за ограничения транзита товаров в российский регион находится на этапе обсуждения. МИД ранее указал, что ответ будет «практическим», а не дипломатическим

Россия рассматривает различные варианты мер в ответ на ограничения Литвы по транзиту в Калининград, сообщил журналистам пресс-секретарь российского президента Дмитрий Песков, передает корреспондент РБК.

«Обсуждаются конкретные меры, мы об этом говорили, разумеется. Мы убеждены, что эти незаконные санкции в данной ситуации абсолютно неприменимы», — сказал он.

По словам Пескова, применение санкций против Калининграда противоречит «основополагающим документам».

«Меры готовятся. После того как мы внимательно все взвесим, уже будем о чем-то говорить», — сказал представитель Кремля.

Ранее официальный представитель МИДа Мария Захарова сообщила на брифинге, что ответные меры на ограничения транзита в Калининград будут лежать «в практической плоскости». Она отрицательно ответила на вопрос, будут ли они в дипломатической плоскости.

Литовские железные дороги ввели запрет на транзит составов ряда товаров в Калининград с полуночи 18 июня. Среди них — цемент, строительные материалы, металлы и некоторые другие важные для производства товары. Министр иностранных дел Литвы Габриэлюс Ландсбергис пояснил, что страна не вводит никаких ограничений самостоятельно, а исполняет европейские санкции, вступившие в силу с 17 июня.«Это сделано после консультаций Еврокомиссии и под ее руководством», — отмечал министр.

Власти Калининградской области опубликовали список товаров, которые нельзя перевозить через Литву. Туда вошли технологические установки для сжижения природного газа, продукты из чугуна и стали, чистопородные лошади, трюфели и продукты из них, сигары, парфюмерия и другое. Глава региона Антон Алиханов заявил, что для доставки «санкционных» грузов будут использовать паромы и суда, а не попавшие под ограничения товары будут возить поездами. Губернатор также отметил, что транспортные трудности «вполне преодолимы», «самолеты летают, поезда пассажирские спокойно ходят».

После введения ограничений на транзит в МИД России вызвали посла ЕС Маркуса Эдерера, там он заявил, что о «блокаде» Калининградской области речи не идет, а также попросил решить вопрос дипломатическим путем. Российское ведомство также выразило протест временной поверенной в делах Литвы Виргинию Умбрасене (с апреля Литва понизила уровень дипотношений и отозвала посла).

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• The outcome of the war in Ukraine may seal the future of Kaliningrad
• Russia’s military forces serve as a lock on the Baltic
• The exclave may morph from Moscow’s strategic asset to a liability

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However, from the Kremlin’s distant horizon, Kaliningrad could be transformed from an asset into a liability. The outlook features very different scenarios where the critical feature concerns what will happen in Belarus.

Pushing back Russia

The first scenario emerges if a decisive Russian defeat in Ukraine leads to a collapse of the regime of strongman Alexander Lukashenko. A cessation of economic support from Russia to Belarus could prompt a cascading crisis, strikes and civil unrest, with parts of the armed forces eventually switching their allegiance. Battle-hardened Belarusian volunteer forces that have fought against the Russians in Ukraine could be decisive here, returning home to help expel all remaining Russian troops from Belarus.

If Belarus switched sides, the consequences for the Russian garrison in Kaliningrad would be immense. Already depleted from having contributed troops to the war in Ukraine, the military outpost would find itself surrounded by hostile forces. As Russia’s borders in the West would be pushed back to roughly where they were at the end of the 16th century, the “Suwalki Gap” would cease to matter. Lines of communication between Poland and Lithuania – and points further north – would be wide open.

Defense consequences

Having already declared Russia a terrorist state and branded Russian warfare in Ukraine as genocide, the government in Lithuania could be expected to join Poland in putting a squeeze on Kaliningrad. It would not result in the exclave becoming formally demilitarized, but, over time, the situation of its garrison would come to resemble that of the Russian outpost in Transnistria in Moldova.

The military would become degraded. Even if Russia had resources to spare for Kaliningrad, which is doubtful, military planners would be constrained by the prohibition of transporting troops or military hardware over land. With the Baltic Sea in the hands of NATO, resupply by sea would be at the mercy of the alliance. With sophisticated missiles stationed on the Swedish island of Gotland, the airspace would also belong to NATO.

Economic deterioration

The exclave’s economy would become equally degraded. The sanctions regime would block all forms of imports over land, leaving shipping as the only lifeline, and Russian ships would have a hard time finding foreign ports at reasonable distances that would receive them. Shortages would become ubiquitous.

In consequence, the local population would find everyday life increasingly complicated. Those employed in the dominant military sector would feel the squeeze of dwindling payments from Moscow. At the same time, those living off border trade would no longer be able to continue such operations.

Under this broad scenario, Kaliningrad would fizzle into irrelevance. With its nuclear weapons eventually removed, the Baltic Sea region would enjoy peace and stability.

Russia prevails

An alternative scenario would occur if the Western resolve to stand by Ukraine erodes over time, and Kyiv is forced to accept a settlement. A deal between the European Union and Russia could end hostilities and cause a withdrawal of Russian forces from much of Ukraine. The price for that would be allowing the Kremlin to retain control over the Crimean Peninsula and Donbas (at least), plus most likely also the coastline up to, and possibly even beyond, Crimea.

Such an outcome would allow the Russian regime to save face, thus removing the threat of regime change via a coup. It would also be associated with a gradual lifting of sanctions to allow Russia to resume cooperation with its former European partners. And it would be associated with Belarus remaining within the Russian camp, fostering even deeper bonds between the two militarized autocracies.

If the Lukashenko regime survived, it may be expected to deal harshly with those who sought to undermine the Russian war effort in Ukraine, ranging from volunteer forces to railway saboteurs and civil society activists. Increased repression would feature the use of the recently reintroduced death penalty and possibly even assassinations of opposition figures abroad. The potential implications for Kaliningrad are considerable.

Regaining strength

As Russia recovered its economic strength, buoyed by continued energy exports to Europe and a resumption of trade that has European industry majors returning to the Russian market, it would also be able to start rebuilding its military capabilities. Embittered by its humiliation in Ukraine, the Kremlin would be prone to use the Belarus-Kaliningrad axis to drive home that its voice must still be heeded.

Given that a negotiated settlement of the war would still be associated with a heavy buildup of NATO forces along Russia’s western borders, and that its conventional military hardware has proven inferior to NATO weapons, Russian planners would be escalating their already loud nuclear saber-rattling.

Kaliningrad would be assigned a critical role in this endeavor. The exclave’s land-based Iskander missiles constitute a lethal threat to Poland. The Baltic Fleet has missile corvettes that may launch nuclear-capable Kalibr cruise missiles capable of striking land targets at 1,500-2,500 kilometer-distance and Kh-35 cruise missiles that may strike enemy ships. If these forces are maintained and upgraded, peace and security in the Baltic Sea region come under a very dark cloud.

Perpetual threat

A middle-of-the-road outcome is possible, where Russia suffered a decisive loss in Ukraine, but Belarus still manages to muddle through. Under this script, the country offers the Kremlin a vantage point to extend future influence toward Kaliningrad and the EU. But it would be a weak link, in constant danger of breaking.

The obvious alternative to a clear Russian defeat is a dubious deal. Western resolve could dissipate over time. The leading European powers may succeed in brokering a “peace” plan that would allow Russia to retain a hold over Ukraine and Belarus to remain in the Russian camp. This scenario ensures access to resources for Russian leaders bent on seeking revenge.

Twitter, a soon-to-be jewel in the world’s richest man’s crown, has onboarded at least a dozen FBI and intelligence agents since 2019—and mostly to very high positions—according to a new investigative journalism report. 

MintPress News (MPN) published a June 21 article that appeared to rely on a simple scrape of LinkedIn bios, making the discovery based on publicly available information. 

Some of the heads Twitter has hunted include:

• A former Lockheed Martin Director of Innovation turned FBI Senior Innovation Advisor who became Twitter’s Director of Corporate Resilience in March of 2020
• A 20-year veteran FBI supervisory Special Agent turned Twitter Director of Corporate Security and Risk in August of 2020
• A 14-year FBI SWAT Team Leader turned Twitter Corporate and Executive Security Services member in September of 2019

Additionally, the outlet noted three former FBI agents—who keep their last names obscured with only an initial on LinkedIn—that now hold Director-level positions in different corporate risk, security, and trust divisions.

Besides FBI agents, another individual served as a 10-year CIA Analyst before becoming Senior Policy Specialist at Twitter Singapore in 2019. They transferred to Silicon Valley in July of 2021.

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The outlet quoted former-FBI-agent-turned-9/11-whistleblower Coleen Rowley as stating she knows of a “revolving door” between the FBI and the industries the establishment’s enforcement arm regulates. 

Rowley told MPN she felt the situation created a serious conflict of interest, “The truth is that at the FBI 50% of all the normal conversations that people had were about how you were going to make money after retirement.”

According to MPN, many of the agents listed in the article “were active in the FBI’s public outreach programs,” which the outlet described as “a practice sold as a community trust-building initiative.”

Rowley characterized such programs as “ways for officials to meet the important people that would give them jobs after retirement,” deriding the affairs as “warp[ing] and pervert[ing] the criminal investigative work that agents do when they are still working as agents because they anticipate getting lucrative jobs after retiring or leaving the FBI.”

The whistleblower, who was named one of Time Magazine’s Persons of the Year for 2002, shared her opinion on the advantage this type of recruitment presents to Big Tech’s cornerstones, “Retired agents often maintained good relationships and networks with current agents. So they can call up their old buddy and find out stuff.” 

“There were certainly instances of retired agents for example trying to find out if there was an investigation of so and so. And if you are working for a company, that company is going to like that influence,” she added.

MPN also pointed out that Twitter has absorbed at least three graduates or fellows of a training facility under the NATO-globalist think tank Atlantic Council .

One of the most notable, albeit perhaps lesser-noticed, missives issued by the Atlantic Council in recent years was “The Longer Telegram,” a policy instruction initiative that advocates for regime change inside China. 

However, the document does not call for the elimination or the fall of the notorious human-rights-abusing and mass-murdering Chinese Communist Party, but instead for the replacement of current CCP leader Xi Jinping in favor of a more traditionally Marxist-Leninist Party head.

One individual mentioned by MPN was directly hired from NATO in 2019 “to work on cybercrime policy.” 

The man is notable because, “There is sparse information on what [he] did at NATO, but, alarmingly, his own LinkedIn profile stated simply that he worked on ‘psychological operations’ for the military alliance,” MPN said.

The individual removed the references to psyops from his profile after an April article by the publication brought the references to light.

In May of last year, establishment media outlet Newsweek published an article chronicling how the Pentagon had created a “secret army” of clandestine online operatives tasked with serving as something of the English-language version of the CCP’s “Wumao” state-backed internet influencers.

The article was a result of a two year investigation covering 600 resumes, 1,000 job postings, and a variety of undisclosed Freedom of Information Act requests, Newsweek stated. 

In the end, they found an army 60,000 strong, “many working under masked identities and in low profile,” backed by an annual budget of more than $900 million.

In May, an undercover video sting by investigative journalism team Project Veritas caught a Twitter senior engineer inauspiciously bragging to a woman he believed he was on a date with that staff not only worked as little as a few hours a week and weren’t trying to make money, but that “we’re all commie as f***.”

“I started working for Twitter and became ‘left.’ I think it’s just like the environment… like you’re there and you become like this commie,” he admitted candidly.

Last month, in the District of Columbia
, a jury could not bring itself to find Michael Sussmann guilty of lying to the FBI
. Nonetheless, we learned a lot during that trial. An FBI agent testified that he is under investigation for withholding exculpatory material during the investigation of the Trump campaign. Other revelations in that courtroom highlighted the eagerness of FBI brass, “the 7th floor,” to proceed with the investigation of that presidential campaign. Withholding exculpatory information about someone is a threat to that individual’s civil rights; withholding exculpatory material about a presidential campaign is a threat to democracy.

When explaining the FBI in the past, I and others would often stress how blessed the United States was to have as our domestic security service a law enforcement agency, an organization that works within the guidelines of the law, to protect our democracy.

Doubts about this blessed situation first surfaced after the 2016 election with the exposure of the FBI role in the orchestrated Russian collusion hoax. The current FBI director’s response, repeated like the reggae tune “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” is simply, “Those responsible are no longer with us.” Developments are multiplying that call into question that happy assumption.

The federal case concerning an alleged plot to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan ended with zero convictions. The defense of entrapment was discussed for the first time in years with credibility. In the aftermath of the bureau’s famous ABSCAM cases of the early ’80s, guidelines were put in place and strictly followed that eliminated entrapment as a viable defense. Basically, there is no entrapment if the government can show the defendant was predisposed toward the crime. Agents were cautioned and trained not to entice someone, who was “not otherwise disposed,” into committing a crime. Disclosures in the Michigan case likely convinced jurors that informants and undercover agents helped shape the conspiracy.

In the government-recorded conversations in that case, many passages show the Michigan defendants expressing unease with the idea of kidnapping and confusion about what was planned. One agent, in a text to his informant, just before he led a surveillance of the governor’s residence, is quoted: “Mission is to kill the governor specifically.” In the aftermath of ABSCAM, we believed entrapment had become a nonissue. Maybe not.

Only four defendants went to trial in the kidnapping plot. But there were as many as 12 FBI informants and two undercover agents among the plotters. Reminds me of the joke, or the criticism in some quarters, about the FBI and the Communist Party during the 1950s and ’60s. The bureau had so many informants in the party, they were most of the members at the party meetings. The not-so-funny joke was that only the dues of the government-paid informants kept the party going.

What is also not so funny is the alleged kidnapping plot was weaponized by Democrats in the 2020 presidential election. Nor is it funny in our democracy that a couple of ultimately acquitted defendants endured 18 months of imprisonment.

Earlier, in November 2021, the FBI in New York conducted pre-dawn raids at the homes of Project Veritas journalists. This was part of an investigation into the “possible theft” of a diary, belonging to President Joe Biden’s daughter. Why use an intrusive search for a mere diary, particularly if Project Veritas had, as claimed, tried to return the diary to law enforcement and Biden’s lawyers. Even left-wing media groups have expressed concern about the violation of a media organization’s First Amendment rights. If the diary belonged to anyone else’s daughter, it is hard to imagine the FBI involved at all. Certainly it is a waste of resources. But to violate a journalist’s rights in the process is a threat to democracy.

On March 11, a redacted internal audit from 2019 became public that showed FBI investigations failed to comply with the Domestic Investigations and Operations Guide at least 747 times in “sensitive investigative matter” cases. These involve politicians, candidates, religious groups, or the news media. The review identified over two “compliance errors” per case. Errors included failure to get approval for opening a case, failure to document a legal review before opening a case, and failure to keep prosecutors informed. The subjects of the cases are those that brush right up against specific constitutional rights.

Rather than being blessed to have a law enforcement agency as its domestic security agency, is the United States now cursed to have a domestic intelligence organization with police powers? Has a once-great agency now become a threat to our democracy?

Thomas J. Baker, a former FBI agent, is the author of The Fall of the FBI being released later this year by Bombardier Books.