Only two short years ago, it was a delight to visit Kaliningrad. Now it’s as hard to break into the prison as it is to break out.

With their backs to the Baltic and fenced in by Schengen, nearly a million people live in what local resident Oleg describes as a ‘European Prison’.

Kaliningraders are locked out of any normal cultural and economic life with their European neighbours. Even if you can handle the interminable border crossing, the Schengen prison governors impose strict visiting times.

The crime of the Kaliningrader is being Russian. Though it was hardly pre-meditated.

Formerly Konigsberg, the city is one of the most tragic casualties of wartime. It was laid waste by RAF firebombers and then run over by the Red Army. The region’s post-war creation by the ‘Great Powers’ was as sloppy and ill-considered as that of Israel. After all this time it surely deserves better.

Kaliningrad is one of the key issues souring Russia-EU relations but neither party has a clear or cogent strategy for resolving the plight of its people. This has led many Kaliningraders to consider themselves political footballs and to dream about some kind of autonomy.

As long ago as 2002, after years of neglect by the former Soviet Union, Kaliningraders formed a ‘Baltic Republican Party‘ - led by Sergei Pasko - amid talk of separatism. It even designed a flag for the new Kaliningrad Republic. But the association failed to attract enough members to be registered as a legal party of the Russian Federation and was dissolved in 2005.

Recognition of an autonomous Kaliningrad by the EU is also a remote prospect. After all, after two referenda in South Ossetia, the EU did not acknowledge South Ossetia’s beleaguered citizens the right of self-determination.

But in any case, talk of independence for Kaliningrad is nonsense. It has to be aligned. The Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences estimated the Kaliningrad Region needs U.S. $36 billion in investment before 2010 to at least approach the EU countries in the level of development. In its isolated state, any kind of revenue is hard to generate even now. Meanwhile, tit for tat spats between Russia and Lithuania or Russia and Poland usually result in Kaliningrad’s exports being sabotaged and imports surcharged.

Writing in the Europa forum, Rustam Vasiliev notes:

‘You know, we Russians here in Kaliningrad are like Pavlov’s Dogs. Today this, tomorrow that. There is no clear policy from Kremlin and Brussels on us. And they are using us, as they want.’

‘Most people in Kaliningrad would agree that Moscow does not understand the feelings of the majority of people within this exclave, inhabited by ethnic Russians but with all the possibilities and infrastructure to become a separate state.’

‘Moscow and Brussels are using us as hostages to push their own policies.’

The special nature of Kaliningraders is always overlooked by both Russia and the EU. Already by 2002, previous Kaliningrad Governor Vladimir Yegorov noted:

‘Kaliningraders travel to the West six times more often than they travel to the East. While over 90 percent of young people have already repeatedly visited Poland, Lithuania and Germany, they have never been to Russia.’

But these days, Kaliningrad’s young people are barely getting out of jail at all. And with current Russia-EU relations polarising over Georgia, there seems little prospect of early release.