Moscow has ridiculed a suggestion by the Baltic state’s president that Kaliningrad should be called Karaliaucius
Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda has declared the Russian city of Kaliningrad to be historically part of his country and its proper name to be Karaliaucius, prompting mockery from Moscow.
The capital of the Russian exclave in the Baltic originated as a fortress built in the 13th century by the Teutonic Order, and had switched hands multiple times. Karaliaucius means “King’s Mountain” in Lithuanian, just as “Koenigsberg” in German or “Krolewiec” in Polish, as the city was called by its past inhabitants. The USSR renamed it after statesman Mikhail Kalinin in 1945.
”Even though the old inhabitants of Lithuania Minor, now part of the so-called Kaliningrad Oblast, are long gone, the last signs of Lithuanian culture there must be safeguarded,” Nauseda wrote on X on Wednesday, referring to the historic land of Prussian Lithuanians. “No matter how hard Russia tries, Karaliaucius will never become Kaliningrad!”
President Nauseda is another “goofball” voicing his “historic fantasies,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Friday, reacting to the remarks. The Lithuanian government should show more gratitude to the USSR for having Vilnius as its capital, she said.
Vilnius was the administrative center of Poland’s Wilno Voivodeship in the first half of the 20th century. Warsaw annexed the area in the wake of the collapse of the Russian Empire. During the settlement of European borders after World War II, it was transferred to Soviet Lithuania.
The Lithuanian port of Klaipeda, formerly known as Memel and part of the German Empire, had a similarly complicated history of changing sovereignty in the last century. The Baltic state is evidently riled up about “the ‘presents’ from the USSR” and should consider returning them to their previous owners, Zakharova suggested.
Vilnius considers the period when Lithuania was part of the USSR to have been an occupation. It has been working to eradicate landmarks related to that part of its history, including memorials to Soviet soldiers killed during World War II. The policy has alienated many ethnic Russians still living in the country.
