Russian outposts 1

During the Cold War years, one of the least visited parts of the old Soviet Union was the port city of Kaliningrad on the Baltic. But it was not always so. Under its earlier incarnation as the Prussian city of Königsberg, the city was no more than a comfortable day's journey from Berlin. Until the spring of 1939, Berliners could leave the German capital's Charlottenburg station at 8.24 am and arrive in Königsberg less than eight hours later. During the years after 1945, Königsberg, by then Soviet Kaliningrad, became one of the most isolated corners of Russia, but recent developments have led to an opening up of this Russian exclave. With the expansion of the European Union, Kaliningrad finds itself now strangely surrounded by EU territory, sharing common borders with Poland and Lithuania, and entirely isolated from the rest of Russia.