According to Andrey Kolesnik, a member of the State Duma Defence Committee, Kaliningrad has enough military capability to respond on its own to any attempt by Europe to impose a blockade. He argued that in the event of direct aggression, nuclear strikes on European capitals are being considered as a possible response.

Kolesnik said that Kaliningrad Region, using only the forces and assets stationed on its territory, is capable of repelling any attack and inflicting irreversible damage, including on airfields that serve as hubs for supplying weapons, for example to Ukraine.

He stressed that if Kaliningrad Region were to come under attack, Russia’s response would definitely be nuclear. In that scenario, he said, there would be no European capitals left. Kolesnik added that Western countries continue to treat such warnings as a joke, just as they previously dismissed the potential of the Oreshnik system.

Commenting on recent remarks by former Lithuanian deputy foreign minister Darius Yurgelyavichus about a possible NATO blockade of Kaliningrad, Kolesnik described such statements as an escalation. In his view, Vilnius has now become the main initiator of this kind of rhetoric within the European Union.

He also noted that countries unfriendly to Russia are already taking concrete steps to encircle Kaliningrad Region, which, he argued, increases the risks. Kolesnik reminded that blocking any subject of the Russian Federation is, in essence, equivalent to a declaration of war.