Kaliningrad, formerly the port of Koenigsberg, capital of East Prussia, was captured from Nazi Germany by the Red Army in April 1945 and ceded to the Soviet Union after World War Two. It is sandwiched between NATO members Poland and Lithuania.
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Its population in 2020 is 489,359 with up to 800,000 residents in the urban agglomeration.
The Teutonic Knights constructed modern-day Kaliningrad in 1255 during the Northern Crusades on the location of the old Old Prussian village Twangste and christened it Königsberg in honour of King Ottokar II of Bohemia.
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Though the capital was moved to Berlin in 1701, Königsberg remained the Prussian monarchy’s coronation city. The city was brutally bombed by the Allies in 1944 and again during the Battle of Königsberg in 1945, before being conquered by the Soviet Union on April 9, 1945.
Kaliningrad Blockade
Lithuanian authorities have imposed a blockade on the transit of products subject to EU sanctions across their territory to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, which went into effect on Saturday, June 18, 2022
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