Russian trains and trucks pass through the village of Kybartai to the Kaliningrad region. Lithuania banned the sanctioned products, angering Russia. However, according to the EU, rail traffic can continue normally.
KYBARTAI Farmer Evaldas Mačiulis looking towards a rain-swept field bisected by a barbed-wire fence dotted with surveillance cameras. It separates Russia’s Kaliningrad islet from Lithuania.
His field also extends right up to the boundary fence. There is nothing surprising about that for a man in his fifties who has lived all his life in the small village of Rajakylä Kybartai.
– The field looks exactly the same on the other side of the fence, Mačiulis laughs.
However, the future now feels uncertain. The main concern is running a business.
– The increase in grain production costs is worrying, but we hope that we will manage somehow.
When asked whether Russia’s recent threats against Lithuania are frightening, Mačiulis answers very cautiously. If the same thing happened here as in Ukraine, it would arouse fear, but you can’t know how it will turn out here, he formulates.
Pieni Rajakylä has suddenly ended up at the center of world politics. Most of the locals are prepared to talk to the media about the sensitive situation. The reason is the bad experience that their words were distorted in some foreign media.
Nobody who doesn’t live here can fully understand the situation in Kybartai, says the village elder, or the municipal manager Romas Šunokas.
The EU allows rail traffic after all
Rajakylä, with a few thousand inhabitants, is known for the fact that trucks and freight and passenger trains to Kaliningrad pass through it. Most of the traffic comes from Russia, from where it has to pass through Belarus through Lithuania.
After Russia invaded Ukraine, the EU imposed wholesale sanctions as punishment, including import bans, which Lithuania is now enforcing in Kaliningrad traffic. In June, bans on steel and ferrous metals came into force. A week ago, they expanded to also cover alcohol, luxury products and building materials.
The situation in Lithuania is difficult. In Russia’s view, traffic to Kaliningrad is internal Russian traffic. From Lithuania’s point of view, the traffic passing through the whole of Lithuania is in no way internal Russian traffic.
Russia has claimed that Lithuania is besieging Kaliningrad and has threatened it with countermeasures. Lithuania has once again maintained that it only implements the EU’s import bans.
Lithuania is reluctantly accepting the Commission’s new guidelines. Prime minister Ingrida Šimonytė’s according to Lithuania still does not consider its previous interpretation of EU sanctions to be wrong. Also according to the commission (you switch to another service) Lithuania has not misinterpreted the implementation of the sanctions, but the matter has now been clarified.
The current restrictions also on train traffic will remain in effect for the time being until Lithuania can organize a new control system.
“Russia takes advantage of the opportunity”
– Russia is now taking advantage of the opportunity to create discord and drive a wedge between allies. That includes threatening to use force, says a Lithuanian researcher Tomas Jermalavičius.
He works as a research director at the Estonian International Center for Defense and Security Research. interviewed him a couple of days before the publication of the European Commission’s new guidelines.
According to Jermalavičius, Germany, which is especially dependent on Russian gas, is vulnerable to Russian pressure. Many in Lithuania raised their eyebrows when the Chancellor of Germany Olaf Scholz already said at June’s NATO summit in Madrid that there should be no sanctions (you switch to another service) valid for Kaliningrad traffic.
– Moscow never escalates tensions when it is countered with force, but when it sees weakness. Now weakness is visible in some parts of the Lithuanian and German governments, says Jermalavičius.
Russia now seems to have succeeded in one of its goals, i.e. easing the sanctions. Spokesman of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Maria Zakharova praised as “realistic and reasonable” the instructions of the EU Commission from last weeks, according to which rail traffic is excluded from the sanctions.
The Pakoteki dispute can be seen on Kybartai’s village road
Slava Ukraine! Kudos to Ukraine!
Such blue-and-yellow roadside signs welcome Russian truck drivers in Kybartai, who pack up to wait for the border crossing.
The kilometer-long line of trucks waiting outside the village is now no longer than usual, but according to the mayor Šunokas, more border guards have had to be hired at the checkpoint.
Additional hands have also been overworked when trucks are checked for prohibited products.
Kybartai railway station has the opposite problem, according to the mayor. The number of trains has clearly decreased, and the working hours of local railway workers have had to be cut.
Lithuanian railways, however says (you switch to another service)that currently import bans only apply to about 15 percent of all train traffic to Kaliningrad.
Poster campaign accuses Russia of genocide
Opportunities have also been seen in Kybartai’s special position on the world map.
Every day, hundreds of truck drivers wait to cross the border in the parking lot, who do not get a real picture of what is happening in Ukraine from the Russian media.
A group of activists from the village have erected a row of large posters in the truck parking area with photos of suffering Ukrainians and atrocities committed by Russian forces in Ukraine.
– The purpose is to draw Russians’ attention to their government’s war in Ukraine and encourage them to give up indifference, says a local organization that participated in the campaign on the website (you will switch to another service).
Each poster reads the same text in Russian: Russia is committing genocide in Ukraine. This happens because you don’t believe in it.
“We stand near the edge of the abyss”
Despite the threats related to the refugee dispute, Lithuanian researchers interviewed by consider it highly unlikely that Russia would actually attack NATO country Lithuania.
The threat of war and the shadows of the war in Ukraine still extend to Kybartai, although few people there are actively afraid of a Russian attack. The general mood is coolly practical: you can’t influence the unpleasant situation, so it’s better to just get on with life.
– The situation arouses concern, and that is natural. In the past, we have seen war pictures from somewhere far away, but now the war is quite close. There have also been Ukrainians here who have seen the war and told what it is like, says the mayor Šunokas.
86 years old Leonas Narbutis childhood in Kybartai was interrupted by World War II, when the Soviet Union occupied Lithuania. The war in Ukraine and Russia’s threats to Lithuania have brought painful memories to the surface.
– I get shivers every time I hear a jet in the sky. I remember what I have had to go through. I’ve run for cover while bombs are exploding all around.
Narbutis went as a refugee first to Germany and then to the United States, where he lived for more than 50 years. Today, he lives in the capital of Lithuania, Vilnius, and often visits his childhood Kybartai, where he participates in local organization activities.
He admits that he has recently considered moving back to the United States.
– I wouldn’t want to live through another war again, says Narbutis.
– We stand close to the edge of the abyss all the time. We don’t know exactly what is going to happen and we just hope that everything will be resolved.
Mindaugas Jurkynas, head of the Faculty of Political Science at Vytautas Suure University, who is from the border area, has also been interviewed for the story.