Western countries will “neutralize” Russia’s westernmost exclave of Kaliningrad if Moscow seriously endangers NATO’s security, Lithuania’s ambassador to Sweden Linas Linkevicius has said.
Writing on X (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday, Linkevicius who previously served as Lithuania’s defense and foreign minister, claimed that the Baltic Sea had become NATO’s internal space after Sweden “was integrated” into the alliance.
On Monday, Hungary became the last NATO member to ratify the Nordic nation’s bid to join the bloc, thus removing the only remaining serious obstacle on Stockholm’s path to the alliance. Budapest had for more than a year been reluctant to do so, rebuking Stockholm over “unfair and unjust” remarks about the state of Hungarian democracy.
Sweden, along with its neighbor Finland, applied to join NATO in 2022 after the start of the Ukraine conflict.
In his post, Linkevicius warned that “if Russia dares to challenge NATO, Kaliningrad would be “neutralized first.”