Kremlin Blasts ‘Hostile’ US Talk Of NATO Quickly Seizing Kaliningrad

Russia has blasted recent comments by a top US general who boasted about NATO’s claimed ability to swiftly capture the Russian Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad if the military action is deemed necessary.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday that “NATO is an instrument of confrontation, it is a bloc that is hostile towards our country” – in a press briefing. He was responding to prior words of General Christopher Donahue, the US Army Europe and Africa commander, who described provocatively that NATO could seize Kaliningrad “from the ground in a timeframe that is unheard of and faster than we’ve ever been able to do,” according to Defense News.

“This is yet another statement in a series of such hostile, aggressive statements that we now often hear from representatives of the defense departments of European countries,” Peskov added.

Gen. Donahue said the Western military alliance has already developed an operational plan to stymie the defensive potential of Russian forces in the Kaliningrad region. This is part of the new “Eastern Flank Deterrence Line,” he said.

“We know what we have to develop and the use case that we’re using is you have to [deter] from the ground,” the top commander continued.

“The land domain is not becoming less important, it’s becoming more important. You can now take down [anti-access, aerial-denial] A2AD bubbles from the ground. You can now take over sea from the ground. All of those things we are watching happen in Ukraine.”

And that’s when he specifically put focus on Kaliningrad, which is surrounded by Poland to the south and Lithuania to the north and east:

For example, Donahue noted, Kaliningrad, Russia, is roughly 47 miles wide and surrounded by NATO on all sides and the Army and its allies now have the capability to “take that down from the ground in a timeframe that is unheard of and faster than we’ve ever been able to do.”

“We’ve already planned that and we’ve already developed it. The mass and momentum problem that Russia poses to us … we’ve developed the capability to make sure that we can stop that mass and momentum problem,” Donahue added.

As for other recent issues raised by the West that Peskov responded strongly to in his Friday press briefing, the Putin spokesman said of EU efforts to drive forward the next anti-Moscow sanctions package, “We are against them [unilateral sanctions]. But at the same time, of course, we have already acquired a certain immunity from sanctions. We have adapted to life under sanctions.”

“Each new package [of sanctions] adds a negative effect for the countries that join it. This is a double-edged sword,” Peskov added. Thus the potential for direct confrontation with the West continues to heat up, with no off-ramp or a promising peace talk scenario anywhere on the horizon.