Sorry, map haters, we’re talking maps again. Topically this time, though. Not that it’s always not topical or anything, but this is more topical than usual when we talk maps.
I don’t know how familiar you guys are with the Baltic region, but it looks like this:
Ok, that’s an expanded view.
The countries Google Maps doesn’t have labeled within this screenshot are: Sweden (where Stockholm is), Finland (where Helsinki is), Ukraine (where Kyiv is, guessing you got that one) and Russia (where Moscow is). But there’s one other bordered-off place. It’s between Lithuania and Poland, there on the sea. This is also Russia. It’s a little piece of Russia, set apart. Seem weird? Well, you wouldn’t say that about Alaska (unless you thought about it for a few minutes, at which point ok fine you might say that about Alaska).
This little piece of Russia (the technical term is a semi-exclave, and yeah, Alaska would be one too) is called Kaliningrad. Kaliningrad Oblast, if we’re going to distinguish the state from the city. It used to be part of East Prussia, which was part of Germany, but after World War II Russia expelled the German residents, imported some of its own Russian residents, and made it part of the Russian SFSR (Russia’s own republic within the USSR). This remains an interesting move by ol’ Stalin. The alternative seems to have been to make it part of the Lithuanian SSR (Lithuania’s own republic within the USSR), and per Wikipedia, semi-exclave status may have been chosen in order to either have a buffer separating Lithuania from the west or give Russia a great Baltic port that doesn’t freeze over in winter.
As a semi-exclave, and as Russia’s closest place to the west, Kaliningrad is kind of a big deal. It gets Russian nukes a lot closer to their potential targets. It also looks funny on a map. And you know Putin’s looked at this map.
So, finally, the Suwalki Gap. What you’ve all been waiting for.
The Suwalki Gap is what NATO calls the 65-mile long Lithuanian-Polish border that stretches from contiguous Russia to Kaliningrad. It’s basically a mountain pass stretching from Russia to Russia, and the fear is that sometime in the next decade, Putin will roll his tanks on through there and grab it, connecting Kaliningrad to the rest of the country and breaking the Baltic states off from the rest of NATO. Doing this would require rolling tanks onto NATO territory, which would be a big step, but maybe we’re headed there anyway. Maybe it happens in the next month instead of the next decade. Things happen fast with wars. Also happen slow. Who knows. That’s the Suwalki Gap, though. It’s right next to Kaliningrad.
