WHEN WILL RUSSIA RETURN KONIGSBURG TO EUROPE ?

While the old colonial powers of Europe have long ago divested themselves of enclaves, Russia stubbornly holds onto European territory that it seized in 1945, and has yet to relinquish possession of. Kaliningrad, the name given to that portion of East Prussia around Konigsberg that was not made a part of post-war Poland, remains basically a Russian military base under occupation, abruptly and illegally incorporated into the Soviet Union, in a unilateral move not accepted by the United States and the United Kingdom at the time. Kaliningrad's final status was to be negotiated at a future peace conference, After Potsdam, but the Russians refused to withdraw from any captured territory after 1945.

Known as Krolwiec in Polish, and Karaliaucius in Lithuanian, the former German territory historically had substantial Polish and Lithuanian populations. Seventy years after the end of the Second World War, this anachronism should be equitably divided between Poland and Lithuania, and the Russian military bases there dismantled.With the independence of the Baltic Countries, the territory is cut off from Russia proper, was never part of Russia, and history requires that it be returned.

 Such a move would go far to reduce the distrust that exists between Russia, on the one hand, and the Eastern European and Baltic countries on the other hand, and thereby reduce Country Risk in the region. A Russian military base does not belong within the European Union.