Free Republic

Six years ago, the Russian navy formed a new army corps whose job it would be to defend Kaliningrad, Russia’s geographically separate outpost on the Baltic Sea between Poland and Lithuania. This year, when the war in Ukraine began to go badly for Russia, the Kremlin yanked the 11th Army Corps from Kaliningrad and sent it into Ukraine. Where the Ukrainian army quickly destroyed it. The formation, deployment and destruction of the 11th Army Corps tell a story that’s bigger than the tragic tale of Russia’s war in Ukraine. The corps, sandwiched between two NATO countries along a strategic sea,...

Fate of Russia's lost art treasure revealed after 60-year cover-up John Ezard, arts correspondent Saturday May 22, 2004 The Guardian (UK) Steven Spielberg would have called it Indiana Jones and the Eighth Wonder, and supplied a happy ending. In a damp cellar, guarded by deadly snakes and senile but savage SS men, the holy grail of Russian art treasures would triumphantly have been liberated. According to evidence disclosed today in Guardian Weekend, the truth is more squalid. Peter the Great's 18th century Amber Room, rated as the world's prime missing art treasure, valued at £150m, perished in the chaos of...

The inhabitants of Kaliningrad, the Russian exclave squeezed between Poland and Lithuania, will soon be able to travel without visas to Gdańsk and other cities on the Polish side of the border. Poles from the Pomeranian and Warmian-Masurian provinces, in turn, will no longer need a Russian visa to go to the Kaliningrad Region to buy petrol, for example, much cheaper there than in Poland, rejoices Gazeta Wyborcza. All this thanks to an agreement on small cross border movement which is to be signed in Moscow on December 14 by the foreign ministers of Russia and Poland. "Russian diplomacy can...

Accident in Iraq kills three Ft. Lewis soldiers By Hal Bernton Seattle Times staff reporter Three soldiers from the Fort Lewis-based Stryker brigade died last night in north-central Iraq when the collapse of a roadside embankment sent two of their vehicles tumbling into an irrigation canal, according to Army officials. It's a sober start for the brigade that arrived in Iraq only a few days ago for a 12-month tour of duty with its armored, eight-wheeled Stryker vehicles. These are the first new Army fighting vehicles in 20 years and have been assigned to combat patrols north of Baghdad, where...

Moscow dispatch Russian sovereignty collides with EU enlargement and catches a forgotten Baltic city in the middle, writes Ian Traynor The ancient seat of the kings of Prussia, the birthplace of Immanuel Kant, Josef Stalin's trophy territory in 1945; the Baltic pocket of Kaliningrad is rich in history. Over the past decade the small region which is now Russia's westernmost outpost has been forgotten. It was once renowned for its amber. These days it is notorious for some of the highest HIV rates in Russia. History is catching up with Kaliningrad and may be exacting a form of revenge as...