Joakim Paasikivi about Dmitrij Rogozin’s plans about the Russian corridor

Russian magnate Dmitry Rogozin says the time has come to create a corridor from Kaliningrad to Russia.

A plan that would lead to a major war – but which is dismissed by Joakim Paasikivi.

– It falls on the unreasonableness, says the lieutenant colonel.

Vladimir Putin’s close ally Dmitry Rogozin, 60, was until the summer of 2022 head of the Russian space industry Roscosmos and has previously been both deputy prime minister and Russian NATO ambassador.

In a post on Telegram, he protests against the travel hassle of visas and other documents required to get between Russia and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.

“The time has come to create a corridor to Kaliningrad,” he writes.

Lieutenant Colonel Joakim Paasikivi says that Russia cannot create the corridor without ending up at war with NATO.

– Then we are in a major war because there will be an attack on NATO countries such as Poland and Lithuania. This is something NATO is well prepared for and the whole purpose of NATO’s build-up in the Baltics with ground and air forces was to raise the threshold and deter Russia from attacking. I hope the Russians see it the same way, he says.

Not a test balloon

He sees it as unlikely that Russia would succeed in getting to the enclave.

– The Russians do not have the ground forces to attack any Western country with any possibility, let alone succeed. This type of statement often comes from various figures with unclear positions in the Russian administration or Russian opinion formation, but I find it difficult to even call it a test balloon, he says and continues:

– This is part of the general rhetoric that constantly states that Russia is under attack and that the West is the aggressor. Kaliningrad in particular has been in the news for several years after Lithuania screwed up the ability to ship things by rail and the EU forced them to back off because they wanted a better relationship. I see Rogozin’s statement as one in the crowd rather than a signal.

“Much more worrying”

Estonian experts have estimated that it will take between two and four years before Russia builds up a sufficient offensive force to pose a real threat. But there are already alarming signals, according to Paasikivi.

– The ambition is there and it has been said that Finland will be the first to know if something is wrong. When Putin visited wounded soldiers at New Year’s and was asked about the West’s support for Ukraine, he said that it was not Ukraine that was the enemy but the West that had attacked Russia for several hundred years. These were signals that were considerably more alarming and show the ambition to change the world order to restore Russia’s great power status.