Kaliningrad to be included in EU visa-free zone?
Russians currently need a visa to travel from Kaliningrad to the rest of the country
Photo: Sludgeulper (flickr)
Poland, Lithuania and Russia are planning to team up to ask the European Commission to include the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad District in a visa-free travel zone, according to the Polish press.
Poland’s Gazeta Wyborcza reports that Prime Minister Donald Tusk and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin are scheduled to meet in the Russian enclave wedged between Poland and Lithuania early in 2010.
The groundwork for this initiative was laid by Russian and Polish foreign ministers Sergey Lavrov and Radoslaw Sikorski last May. In September, Warsw signed a breakthrough deal with Moscow, which agreed to allow Polish ships right of passage through the Vistula Lagoon to reach the Polish port town of Elblag.
Kaliningrad, which the Soviet Union took over from Germany in 1945, used to be a high security military zone with half a million troops until the collapse of the Communist system. The enclave still has great strategic importance, but it suffered serious economic problems.
When Poland and Lithuania joined the European Union, Kaliningrad was cut off from the rest of Russia, becoming a Russian enclave within the EU bloc. Travel regulations caused tension in relations between both Lithuania and Poland, especially when Moscow started to press for an ex-territorial corridor to be created, to link Kaliningrad with Russia.
The European Union has so far opposed bringing in territory not in the 27 bloc into visa-free travel zones. It did not back Poland when it wanted to extend the standard 30 kilometre visa-free border zone with Ukraine to include Lviv.
Comments
-
del.icio.us
-
Mister wong
-
digg
-
blogMarks
-
Facebook
