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Kaliningrad: Kaliningrad Oblast
built 608 days ago
The Kaliningrad Oblast is the northern part of historic East Prussia (the southern part is roughly the Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship of Poland). In 1525 the Duchy of Prussia was founded by the last High Master of the Teutonic Knights Albrecht of Brandenburg-Ansbach who became the first duke of Prussia. From 1618 in personal union with Brandenburg, the duchy was elevated to a kingdom in 1701.
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Average yearly power consumption in the Kaliningrad Oblast was 3.5 bln kWh in 2004 and, with local power generation providing just 235 mln. kWh. Balance of energy was imported from neighbouring countries. New Kalinigrad power station had been built in 2005, covering 50% of the Oblast's energy needs. Second power station is scheduled to enter service in 2010, making Oblast independent from electricity import.
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Kaliningrad Oblast has a small international airport, so you may need to fly into Lithuania (Vilnius), Poland (Gdansk or Szczytno) or Finland and take a bus or ferry to Kaliningrad. -Local KD-Avia is flying to several European cities, this is the easiest way to get into Kaliningrad. You can take a LOT (Polish Airlines) flight through Warsaw, every day except Saturday. Aeroflot ... has severla daily flights from Moscow.
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Before 1945, what is now Kaliningrad Oblast made up the northern part of East Prussia from the Baltic Sea to the east up to Lithuania and north of today's Poland. In 1992 Russian President Boris Yeltsin expressed his opinion that the oblast should be given to Poland (as was planned at the Yalta Conference in 1945 - originally the Germans were to keep Stettin while the Poles were to get K�nigsberg). However, when Poland asked for NATO accession, the offer was dropped. In 2004 the oblast will become an enclave in another sense, being surrounded by members of the European Union.
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Due to the collapse of the Soviet Union from 1989 to 1991, the Kaliningrad Oblast became a Russian exclave, geographically separated from the rest of Russia. This isolation from the rest of Russia became even more pronounced politically when Poland and Lithuania initially became members of NATO, and subsequently the European Union in 2004. All military and civilian land links between the region and the rest of Russia have to pass through members of NATO and the EU. Special travel arrangements for the territory's inhabitants have been made.
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[W]hile President Vladimir Putin indicated that he desired closer ties with Europe, his representatives in Moscow and Kaliningrad were slow to adopt a common approach toward the oblast's problems. By the fall of 2002... the EU and Russia reached an agreement on providing transit documents (and a sealed train) to facilitate travel to and from Kaliningrad to Russia through Lithuania.
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Kaliningrad Oblast