A quiet place. A story from Kaliningrad Oblast, where Europe is still visible from the other shore and the war seems far away until you start talking to people

“People miss each other”

“You’re headed into the NATO lair!” a friend joked when he learned I was going to Kaliningrad. In the final days of August, Russian media headlines read:

“NATO holds unscheduled drills near Kaliningrad Oblast” — RTVI, August 19;

“They’ll break their teeth: NATO rehearses seizure of Kaliningrad” — Komsomolskaya Pravda, August 22;

“NATO spies get harsh response over Kaliningrad: top ‘special military operation’ news for August 26” — Argumenty i Fakty, August 26.

“Things are much calmer here than in mainland Russia,” said Igor, a taxi driver whose name has been changed. “Drones don’t fly here. We’ve got nukes.”

Igor is in his forties. He moved to Kaliningrad from a CIS country 14 years ago. He said some residents are panicking and considering leaving because “Kaliningrad Oblast will be the first to be hit [by Europe].” His own attitude is simple: “Whatever will be, will be.”

In the spring of 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic began, Lithuania and Poland closed their borders to most foreign nationals, including at their crossings with Kaliningrad Oblast. Two years later, COVID restrictions were eased, but the old way of life did not return: after the war in Ukraine began, the two countries introduced new restrictions on Russian citizens.

Most Kaliningrad residents can no longer enter either Lithuania or Poland. To cross the border, they need a second citizenship, a residence permit from an EU or Schengen country, or another basis for entry permitted under the rules. Tourism is not one of them. At the same time, many still have friends and loved ones on the other side of the border.

“People miss each other,” Igor sighed. “That’s just how things are now. They don’t want us there.” After a moment, he added: “I’m not going to say, ‘Why did we do all this?’ or that we need to stop [the ‘special military operation’]. At this point, we just have to see it through to the end.”

“What do they want from us?”

“We felt like Russian-speaking Europeans,” Vyacheslav, an entrepreneur from Kaliningrad, told 7x7. “No one ever gave me a hard time for being Russian, either in Poland or Latvia. I’ll never forget how, when we were very young, we sat in central Gdansk late at night, horribly drunk, singing ‘We dream not of the roar of the cosmodrome.’ Toward morning, we realized we’d been yelling our heads off on the steps of a police station. The lights were on inside, but no one came out. They decided not to bother with us. Drunken Russians — what can you expect?”

It had been raining all morning in Zelenogradsk. It was windy by the sea, and tourists were warming up in coffee shops and amber stores. Outside a century-old house with faded plaster and a tiled roof, an older man was trimming the branches of a tree in a small garden. Beside him stood a chair with a basket of apples and a rain-soaked piece of paper reading, “Help yourself!”

Nikolay Timoshenko spent his entire career as a researcher at the Russian Federal Research Institute of Fisheries and Oceanography (VNIRO). He used to travel regularly to conferences across the European Union, but since the war began, he has attended them mostly online. His home is filled with a collection of mugs brought back from business trips abroad and travels with his wife.

“Let’s be honest, things were bad with food in the 1990s. We used to go to Lithuania and stock up for two weeks — everything from glazed curd snacks and cottage cheese to meat. That’s how we got by,” said Tatyana Timoshenko, who spent many years working at the Museum of the World Ocean.

Tatyana and Nikolay have been together for 50 years. They invited me into their home, and Tatyana immediately began making coffee. In her spare time, she plays tennis, and since the war began, she has also taken up volunteer work, weaving camouflage nets.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Nikolay earned extra money working as an interpreter for Germans who came to see the places where they or their families had once lived. The Timoshenkos became friends with one such family and stayed in touch with them for 20 years. They drove their Volga to Wiesbaden, Germany, for the father’s 70th birthday, and after he died, they remained in contact with his son. In 2022, they lost touch.

“We traveled all over the Baltics. We weren’t afraid of anything; everything was fine. Then [in the Baltic countries] this policy started — everything was against Russians, we were their enemies. What do they want from us, the dogs?” Tatyana said.

When they were young, the Timoshenkos wanted to travel around Russia. On one occasion, they made it as far as Kostroma and Yaroslavl.

“I looked around and thought, wow, this is like a village! The road was terrible — dust, potholes, it was impossible to drive. And I thought, holy crap, how do people live here? We never had anything like that,” she said, recalling the trip.

Tatyana had heard on television that Germans were leaving Germany en masse because children there are taught from kindergarten that “a girl can be turned into a boy” and vice versa, even without their parents’ consent. She had also watched a program about Finland, where, she said, “children are allowed to do anything,” and can be removed from their families and placed with new parents at the slightest provocation.

“We have a ritual: Russia 1 and Channel 24. We don’t listen to enemy voices. I don’t even have a VPN,” Nikolay said. “We know they [non-state media] lie. We’ve seen it time and again. And even when they don’t lie, they still don’t tell you everything.”

“Just to eat”

Galina Ivanovna, whose name has been changed, often traveled to European cities near the border with her children and grandchildren. Before the COVID-19 pandemic and the war, trips to neighboring countries were a routine part of life for Kaliningrad residents. Even a modest pension was enough to afford them.

“It happened all the time,” she said, gesturing animatedly. “We could cross the border on the [Curonian] Spit and go to [the Lithuanian resort town of] Nida. My son used to say, ‘Let’s go just to eat.’ And that wasn’t just a figure of speech: no matter how hard we tried, our restaurants and cafés never reached the level of those in our neighboring countries, Poland and Lithuania, which weren’t exactly rich either. You could cross the border in Sovetsk over the Queen Louise Bridge, and there’d be a restaurant right there by the road. You’d order some cepelinai, eat them, and feel like you couldn’t fit another bite. We don’t have anything like that here.”

Galina Ivanovna looks straight ahead, slightly from under her brow. An amber brooch, a symbol of Kaliningrad Oblast, is pinned to her cardigan. Her family had a tradition of visiting water parks in Poland and Lithuania before the start of the school year.

“You could swim as much as you wanted! None of this three-hour limit in the water. We had a water park here [in Kaliningrad]: two hours, and if you wanted to stay longer, you had to pay all over again. And the prices were crazier than in Poland. Before 2019, they were building a new water park there [in Poland], even closer to the border. They were counting on our market, and now it’s alles kaput (editor’s note: German for ‘everything is finished’),” she said, tossing her hair.

For Kaliningrad residents, taking their children to EU countries was cheaper than traveling around mainland Russia. To redress the balance, in the early 2000s, the American Soros Foundation and the Kaliningrad Oblast administration launched a charity initiative called Russian Children Travel Across Russia. It ran for three years.

The Soros program was replaced by a state initiative in 2006. Locals tell the following story about how it came about. An official from the Ministry of Education visited Kaliningrad and asked a group of children where they had been and what they had seen. They told her about weekends at a water park in the Lithuanian city of Klaipeda and at a resort in Mikołajki, Poland. The official asked, “But have you ever been to Moscow?” The children replied, “No, it’s far away. It’s abroad.”

“After that, they started painting hu-u-uge boulders all over the region in the colors of the Russian flag, to remind us that we were Russians,” said a local activist who asked to remain anonymous. “Then they launched a travel program for children where parents pay just 3,000 or 5,000 rubles and the child gets to see Russia. The idiots finally remembered we existed. Excuse me.”

7x7 was unable to verify the story about the boulders, the official, and the schoolchildren, but the We Are Russians! program still exists today.

Kaliningrad Oblast residents can obtain international passports without paying the state fee. They need them to travel overland to mainland Russia because the route passes through other countries.

Traveling by car from mainland Russia to Kaliningrad and back is no longer possible if the sole purpose of the trip is tourism, leaving the train as the only option. Passengers need a special transit document and are not allowed to leave the train while it is in Lithuania.

Travel by car also requires a separate transit document, which is issued to people who have relatives or property there, work or study there, or need to travel for medical treatment.

Galina Ivanovna vividly remembers turning on the television and seeing Vladimir Putin announce the start of the war. “I wouldn’t say it came as a huge surprise, but it still rattled me. Until the very end, everyone thought it wouldn’t happen.” She believes that Kaliningrad residents have “gone silent” and avoid asking unnecessary questions.

“Everyone is afraid of the [security] agencies, of going to prison. Young people are locked away in a spiritual closet; they’ve become very good at speaking in Aesopian language. We stand in line and no one says a word. It’s the same on the bus.”

On the first day of the war, she ran into two women she knew on the street. They asked why she “looked so gloomy.” Galina Ivanovna replied, “Well, the special military operation.” The encounter ended in an argument.

“They really went after me! I thought they were going to kill me, right there in that alley. Though I was already prepared for it, because I’d known about the influence of the towers since 2014. No one wants to think about it, but they exist.”

She is convinced that people who watch television are being exposed to propaganda radiation transmitted through special towers or masts, like those in the Strugatsky brothers’ novel Prisoners of Power. She even has a theory about when the transmitter is turned up to maximum power: before major political events.

“Pay attention during the elections. Watch people. They should be more agitated than before,” she warned as we said goodbye.

Bottled up

Tilsiter cheese, commonly found in Russian stores, takes its name from the German town of Tilsit, now Sovetsk, a town in Kaliningrad Oblast right on the border with Lithuania. Fewer than 40,000 people live there. In several apartment buildings I entered, the scene was the same: dust, wooden railings worn away by time, crooked steps, and scorch marks on the ceilings.

Some German-era buildings still survive in the town, but they too have fallen into disrepair: plaster flakes away to expose the brickwork, while courtyards are overgrown with grass. Aging Mercedes and BMWs are parked outside; Russian-made cars are a rarity here. Before the war in Ukraine and the sanctions that followed, bringing a car over from Germany was easier and cheaper than transporting a Zhiguli to Kaliningrad from mainland Russia.

Andrey and Volodya were talking outside an auto parts store in Sovetsk. Both are around 50. Andrey is thin, with a sharp, elongated face; Volodya is round and mustachioed, dressed in work overalls and holding a wrench.

“They’ve sealed us off here like a cork in a bottle,” Volodya said, waving the wrench. “We’re sitting in this bottle like cockroaches. We used to go to Lithuania just to buy sausage.”

“People grew up together!” Andrey agreed. “We’d go over there for vodka and sausage, and they’d come here to sell cabbage and carrots at the market and buy medicine, gasoline, and auto parts. When I was a kid, I used to go over there [to Lithuania] to swim. There was a beach just across the bridge where there was no current. Boys from Panemunė [the Lithuanian town opposite Sovetsk] went to school with us.”

The men believe that foreign politicians are turning ordinary Europeans against Russians. I heard similar views several times during my trip. One Kaliningrad resident put it this way:

“First they gave us the pandemic and closed the borders. Gradually, that turned into the ‘special military operation.’ And if they want to stop us from talking [to Europeans], they have to close the border and then keep telling them how terrible we are. I haven’t heard anyone [in Russia] saying that Russians are treated badly in Europe. Maybe we [you and I] watch different Channel Ones? It’s all being done by those at the top. Ordinary people are completely different. Soon everything will change, and there won’t be any problems between ordinary people.”

Both Andrey and Volodya are convinced that relations between ordinary people have not changed. At least, they still talk to friends and acquaintances abroad just as they did before and, according to both men, complain to each other about their lives:

“An old guy comes over from [the Lithuanian town of] Pagėgiai and says, ‘Andryukha, the only people left in Pagėgiai are pensioners, public-sector workers, officials, and drunks who collect scrap metal. All the young people have gone off to Europe for work.’”

In 2008, Andrey traveled to Kursk with his son. Looking at the cars parked along the streets, the boy asked, “Dad, where are the BMWs? Where are the Mercedes?”

Kaliningrad residents used to bring cars in from Lithuania and Germany and then ship them on to other parts of Russia. Closed borders have now made this expensive. Locals either keep driving old foreign cars, transport Russian-made vehicles by ferry (Volodya paid 70,000 rubles to have his GAZ Sobol delivered), or buy Chinese models from local dealerships.

Andrey’s son works at the Avtotor plant, which assembled BMW, Kia, Hyundai, and Ford vehicles before the war. After its partners pulled out of Russia, the plant switched to assembling Chinese brands.

“Personally, I think these are all temporary difficulties. They’ll give the Europeans a good hiding. Let them spend a winter or two without gas...” Volodya concluded.

People aren’t ready to buy

“Drones don’t fly here, but economically, we’re taking just as much of a hit as the rest of Russia,” Vyacheslav, an entrepreneur from Kaliningrad, told 7x7.

Before the war, he and his business partner imported construction materials from Germany. Now their business is in the final stages of bankruptcy.

“We thought there was nothing more reliable: what could be better than European quality?” he said. “And we didn’t stop operating because the borders were closed. We found ways around that and brought the goods in, but people aren’t ready to buy. They have no money and no planning horizon. It’s like selling an expensive car to someone who doesn’t plan more than a year ahead. Why would they care that a Mercedes will still be running 20 years from now if they’re only thinking about next month?”

Like everyone else I spoke to, Vyacheslav noted the sharp rise in prices in the region since 2022. Inflation in Kaliningrad Oblast is higher than the Russian average. Because of logistical difficulties, food has to be shipped to the exclave by ferry.

According to Kaliningradstat, food prices rose by almost 14.4% in 2025 alone, with some products becoming even more expensive. People have begun buying bread, fruit, confectionery, and vegetable oil less often.

Kaliningrad and the surrounding region do not have the Magnit or Monetka supermarket chains familiar across the rest of Russia. Instead, there are Eurospar supermarkets and neighborhood stores called Kant. Pyaterochka entered the regional market in 2020.

“We used to have European products here, including dairy, and prices were lower than in Moscow or even Omsk,” Vyacheslav said. “You’d go to Poland, and prices there were lower still. Now the economy has been completely restructured. The restaurant business is doing well, thanks to tourists. People rent out apartments: you walk into an apartment building and see lockboxes hanging by the doors for handing over the keys.”

According to almost everyone I spoke to, the number of Russian tourists in the region has increased dramatically since 2020. Some locals say they have grown tired of them. Vyacheslav believes tourists are one of the reasons the region’s economy has been able to adapt.

“People don’t understand what’s going on”

While Russian media outlets spent the summer writing about a potential NATO attack on Kaliningrad Oblast, Western media, in turn, reported on threats from Russia to the Baltic states:

“Russia accused of planning attacks on Baltic or Polish infrastructure” — Financial Times, July 15;

“Baltic Sea nations plan drone defence task force, Germany says” — Reuters, August 10;

“CIA chief’s surprise Moscow trip was to warn Russia not to attack NATO” — The Wall Street Journal, August 26.

The military presence is most palpable in Baltiysk, formerly Pillau. Russia’s westernmost town is home to one of the country’s main naval bases, a vast port filled with ships of the Baltic Fleet. Old German barracks stand alongside military dormitories housed in standard Soviet-era buildings. People in military uniform are a common sight on the streets.

Olga Piletskaya performs volunteer service in the refectory of the Baltic Fleet’s main cathedral. The cathedral itself occupies a former German Lutheran church. The mass transfer of former Lutheran and Catholic churches and historic Teutonic castles to the Russian Orthodox Church began back in 2010.

Olga is 65. She was born in Baltiysk and clearly remembers the period when the town was closed to outsiders. In August 1995, the head of the regional administration began gradually lifting the permit system, and in the fall of 2009, town authorities stopped checking the documents of people entering Baltiysk.

Piletskaya is one of the few people I spoke to who does not regret the closure of the borders.

“Our enclave has begun discovering its own country. We’ve seen the beauty of Mother Russia! I’ve been to Lake Baikal and Irkutsk. My most recent trip with my granddaughters was to Moscow, and from Moscow we took a river cruise to Perm. The city amazed me with its beauty and its people. I’m delighted that the borders have closed.”

Before the borders closed, Olga and her family had traveled not only to neighboring countries but also to Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Germany. Over the past few years, she and her relatives have traveled to Crimea, and now she “doesn’t feel any desire to go abroad at all.” They are still in touch with friends and relatives who live abroad and who, according to Olga, “understand the situation correctly, without cruelty, hostility, or curses.”

Olga sharply cut me off when I asked how wartime was felt in the town: “What do you mean by ‘wartime,’ from your point of view?”

“We [in Kaliningrad Oblast], of course, support what is happening. We hope for victory as soon as possible. This fascism... We never thought 1941 could happen again. We pray for those on the front, those who have lost their homes, those who have no food, those who are sick, and those who are in despair. We’ve woven and sent camouflage nets and made [trench] candles. I feel sorry for people, and I feel sorry for those who have become so confused, over there in Europe. When we saw the opening ceremony of the Olympics in Paris, it was pure devilry,” she added.

A few minutes after I left the refectory, a fighter jet roared overhead. That day, fighter jets were taking off in Baltiysk every few minutes. Passersby did not seem to pay any attention.

A man in military uniform stood fishing against the backdrop of Baltic Fleet ships. “Is it always like this here?” I asked him. He replied, “It’s just exercises. This is a military town, after all. We’re used to it here.”

“I don’t think everyone here [in Kaliningrad Oblast] fully understands what’s going on,” Vyacheslav, the entrepreneur, explained. “In Russia, maybe there’s been a sobering effect from the drones flying overhead and the explosions. We don’t have any of that here. But a lot of people come here and tell us about it.”

***

On my first evening in Kaliningrad, I turned on the TV in my hotel room and immediately landed on Channel One. The analytical program The Great Game was on. Host Dimitri Simes began speaking:

“The Baltic states owe their independence to Russia. ...> They joined an undeclared war against us for no reason whatsoever. I believe that in war, as in war. And the victor has different rights from the defeated. Rights we would never have insisted on, demands that would never even have occurred to us, had they not started this brutal war against us.”

He later added that Finland and the Baltic states were “enemies of Russia” and ended the program with the words:

“We wanted to be their friends; they decided to treat us as enemies. ...> They are enemies, and as Joseph Vissarionovich [Stalin] used to say, if enemies do not surrender, they are destroyed.”

Boys

A military base is located behind the bus station in Sovetsk. Brick barracks, young men in military uniform, posters advertising military contract service everywhere. There are far more of these posters here than in Kaliningrad.

Across from the base is a military supply store. Natalia, the saleswoman, sits surrounded by uniforms, knives, patches, and flasks. She has dark hair, manicured nails, and lined eyes and eyebrows. A television is blaring in the shop. An NTV talk show is on, with an episode titled Did She Cheat on Her Lover with Her Husband?

“The town used to be beautiful,” Natalia said. “Lots of roses and greenery, lots of factories. In the 1990s, everything collapsed and the young people left. Now the only one still operating is Vičiūnai, a factory that makes crab sticks. We keep hoping things will get better, but these days it’s mostly pensioners living here. They’re promising us a big hospital, and they’ve started fixing the roads. A lot of the houses need repairs. Well, tourists come here. They like it.”

Natalia remembers when Germans originally from Tilsit used to visit Sovetsk. Sometimes they would knock on the doors of homes built before World War II and ask if they could see the apartments where they had spent their childhoods.

Soldiers from the base across the street regularly stop by the military supply store. Sovetsk is a small town, and acquaintances and friendships form quickly. Natalia has seen young conscripts sign military contracts and leave for Ukraine.

“All the boys who served here, all of them left. Children, just children. The whole cemetery is full [of them]; they’re running out of space. I feel sorry for the boys,” she said quietly and asked me not to ask any more questions about the soldiers.

Friends from Voronezh flew in to visit her this summer. They said they had gotten a good night’s sleep for the first time in a long while: the Black Earth region is regularly targeted by Ukrainian drones.

Kaliningrad Oblast authorities have issued a drone alert only once: in May 2026, the regional warning system was activated. The exclave does not experience internet shutdowns, Ozon and Wildberries warehouses do not go up in flames, and even the fuel crisis this summer lasted only two weeks. At the same time, 1,752 Kaliningrad Oblast residents had been killed in the war in Ukraine as of September 28, 2026, according to Mediazona’s count. Of them, 104 lived in Sovetsk.

“There’s no end in sight. I don’t know. I suppose something has to happen eventually. How much longer can this go on? Who’s going to fight? You can already count the young men left on one hand,” Natalia added heavily before cutting the conversation short when her son called.

“I really love my country”

I met Olya in central Kaliningrad while she was singing a song by the band Pornofilmy.

Sveta, Olya, and Seryozha are all 20 years old. Sveta and Olya are street musicians. That day, they were performing on a bridge over the Pregolya River, overlooking the restored New Synagogue. It is a busy spot, with hundreds of tourists passing through every day.

Sveta plays guitar, and Olya sings. They rent their equipment from Seryozha. The three believe that life in their city is freer than in Russia as a whole. For example, local police do not detain people for performing songs by “foreign agents.” But the young people are anxious about the future.

Olya started working at a young age, handing out leaflets, working in restaurants and cafés, and singing on the street. She tried to save up for a car, and by 2020, she had managed to put together enough money. But then the pandemic began, followed by the war.

“Prices in stores suddenly shot up, for electronics and everything else. And suddenly I was short a substantial amount even for an old used car. While I was saving up the difference, inflation hit again. In the end, prices doubled, and all the money I had worked so hard to save became worthless,” she said with a shrug.

During their street performances, Sveta and Olya are often approached by servicemen returning from Ukraine, both locals and tourists.

“Some behave normally, but we’ve also come across people who acted completely out of line,” Sveta said. “Often an argument starts and they come out with something like, ‘I just got back from the 'special military operation,' why the hell are you talking to me like that?’ even though we’d been having a perfectly calm conversation. And there’s just no calming them down.”

People their age are going off to war. A friend of Sveta’s was caught placing drug stashes, and according to her, police gave him an ultimatum: prison or the “special military operation.” She does not know how long he spent at the front before he was killed. He was 24.

Many of Olya’s former classmates at a college in Sovetsk were mobilized. Some, she said, have already been killed. She has buried two friends. One of them had a pregnant wife, who gave birth after his death.

“Why do people go [to war] voluntarily? People are raised differently here: you have to repay your debt to the Motherland. It’s drilled into your head from childhood,” she said.

Sveta added:

“I used to be a huge patriot. I really love my country. I’d like to live here for the rest of my life. I sincerely believed that the ‘special military operation’ had begun for the reason we were given. We don’t know what to believe because people are telling us something completely different. I want to leave [Russia]. Unfortunately.”

Seryozha, who until then had been goofing around like a kid and avoiding any serious conversation, fell silent when the subject turned to the war. Then he added:

“It’s unbelievably scary. Either everything is going to be bad or it’s going to be very, very bad. The question is how soon complete anarchy and collapse will set in. It’s already happening, but for now everyone is pretending everything is fine and trying to turn a blind eye to it. The problem is no longer how to buy an apartment. People are wondering how they’re going to make it through the immediate future. It’s very sad that our conversations don’t change anything. We’re just discussing how everything is slowly dying out.”

“We do what we can”

Alyona, whose name has been changed, spent her childhood in Chkalovsk, a Kaliningrad neighborhood near a military airfield and aviation garrison. Her father is a trained military doctor. She remembers cows wandering the streets of the military settlement and a forest beginning just across the road from her home, where children liked to build makeshift shelters in the trees. All of her friends had parents or relatives who were connected to the airfield in one way or another.

Alyona’s father wanted to go to Ukraine, but he was not accepted for military service there because of his age.

“The people who settled these areas were connected to the military in one way or another. It’s a way of thinking: whatever they’re told, that’s how it will be. I think these people have certain scripts in their heads that they have trouble imagining themselves without. That’s why so many people in Kaliningrad live by the principle, ‘Tell us what to do and we’ll do it.’ It’s very difficult to get [people] to stop and think, to make their own choices. We’re all somehow very passive in that sense,” Alyona said.

She works at Feminitive, an independent feminist community space and educational project in Kaliningrad. It was founded in 2018 by activist Darya Yakovleva.

In 2024, Maksim Makarov, the Kaliningrad leader of the far-right nationalist organization Russian Community, filed a complaint against Darya over alleged “LGBT propaganda.” A year later, the conservative movement People’s Call demanded that Feminitive be investigated, accusing the project of “promoting sodomy, sex change, and resistance to the state.” Despite this, the space has continued to operate.

“People feel the tension and pressure. I know there are people who are afraid to come here. They’re like, ‘This is complete madness, I don’t want to put myself at risk like that.’ Even though we don’t have any [legal] status. I understand that the situation is frightening. We do what we can to make ourselves less frightening,” Alyona said.

According to Alyona, Feminitive is not a safe space but rather a brave space: its staff cannot guarantee complete safety, but they do everything they can to minimize the risks. At the same time, it is “important for us to remain visible and active.”

Darya Yakovleva plans to continue her work and remain in the country for as long as possible.

“For me, the red line was, and probably still is, a criminal case,” she said in a 2024 interview with Radio Liberty.* “...> I don’t want that kind of fate for my loved ones, for an enormous amount of suffering and unnecessary burdens to fall on them, forcing them to work just to somehow support me in prison.”

They didn’t shy away from the word “feminism”

For a long time, Kaliningrad Oblast was one of the main hubs for cooperation between Russia and European countries. According to some people 7x7 spoke to, European culture became deeply woven into local life.

According to local feminist and activist Svetlana Viktorovna, whose name has been changed, this influence extended to local officials as well. They “didn’t even shy away from the word ‘feminism’” because they attended international conferences that had requirements for the number of women in each delegation.

“At conferences, [the organizers] used to put ‘Russia’ on everyone else’s nameplate, but ours said ‘Kaliningrad.’ You could feel the distance and the sense that we were somehow different,” she said. “There was a time when [the federal authorities] approached the region’s development from two directions. On the one hand, it was a testing ground for cooperation between Europe and Russia. On the other, it was a military and defense outpost: we always had a lot of military academies, and studying there was prestigious. I suppose the second side won.”

Svetlana Viktorovna also believes that the region has “always been known for its independent-mindedness.” For example, at a December 2009 rally against an increase in the transport tax, protesters chanted slogans such as “United Russia, go to Russia!” In January 2010, around 10,000 people gathered for an anti-government protest that media outlets described as “one of the most memorable chapters in the history of protest in Kaliningrad Oblast.”

Former journalist Katya Medvedeva suggests that perhaps it was less about independent-mindedness than detachment: Kaliningrad residents were equally indifferent to both the opposition and the authorities.

“For quite a long time, we felt cut off from Russia,” she said. “We were always open to international cooperation, we didn’t feel hostility toward our neighbors, and we didn’t experience Russophobia from them. Life here went on in its own way. The security forces didn’t crack down on people, and there was no lawlessness on either side. When everything is smooth and calm, you let your guard down. You don’t take to the barricades or get involved in political or civic life because everything is fine as it is.”

In 2023, Katya left journalism and opened a bar called Sovetov in Amalienau, a historic district of Kaliningrad: “So you’d have somewhere to stop by for a glass, a shot, or a cup of something in these dreary and uncertain times.” She attributed her decision to leave journalism to pressure “not only from the outside, but from within as well.”

Katya was born in Sovetsk, near the Lithuanian border: she could see another country from her window. She jokes that this was her “window to Europe.” She believes that living next to an open border also shaped the political atmosphere:

“Kaliningrad Oblast always stood out in a good way. Back when we covered [politician Alexei] Navalny’s* protests and his headquarters* operated across the country, when you weren’t sent to prison for taking part, the opposition could speak freely and hold pickets and rallies.”

Katya, like many others, attributes the ability to gather without “police lawlessness” to the region’s proximity to Europe and to the fact that local law enforcement officers “were born and raised here too.”

According to her, at anti-war rallies, if police detained anyone, it was “the guys who were getting really brazen, practically waving [a flag] over their heads.” Or people were detained, but without violence. There was nothing like “people being grabbed, roughed up, beaten, or pregnant women being shoved into police vans.”

“We [Kaliningrad residents] have always felt a little like outcasts from the rest of Russia,” she added. “Mainland Russia didn’t care much about our problems until domestic tourists started pouring in. We had political ties with the European Union. Kaliningrad residents were the least likely to expect our country to commit military aggression against another state, and people here wanted it least of all. There were so many economic and romantic ties. People here expected productive, long-term, friendly relations with the European Union.”

According to human rights activists, around 20 people were detained at a rally in Kaliningrad on February 24, 2022, and another 58 on March 8. Stickers reading “A traitor liVes here” appeared on the homes of some protesters.

Katya said that recently, many people in Kaliningrad and the surrounding region have been detained on treason charges, but these cases receive almost no media coverage. One of the most recent high-profile cases was the prosecution of local lawyer Maria Bontsler. After her arrest, advertisements for the local business news outlet Rugrad appeared on digital displays at some bus stops in Kaliningrad. The screens showed footage filmed by the Investigative Committee during Bontsler’s detention.

“We never used to feel much influence from Russia,” entrepreneur Vyacheslav said. “Even from the ‘office’s’ [the FSB’s] point of view, we’re considered politically unreliable. Some of my former classmates [work] for the FSB. From their point of view, all Kaliningrad Oblast residents ever think about is getting the hell out of here and moving to Europe. So they keep a particularly close eye on us.”

The portal

Sovetsk stands on the left bank of the Neman River. Rising above it is the Queen Louise Bridge, with its stone portal and two small towers at the entrance. The bridge connects Sovetsk and Panemunė. On the opposite bank stands a power transmission tower where Lithuanian and Ukrainian flags have been flying since the start of the war. In response, city authorities installed a huge illuminated letter Z, a symbol of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, on the Neman embankment. In 2025, they added a giant Russian flag beside it.

The Queen Louise Bridge looks like a surviving fragment of old Tilsit, one that has endured despite the wars and the borders drawn along the Neman. There was a time when residents of the two Soviet republics could freely cross from one town to the other. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, border controls were introduced at the approach to the bridge. The bridge has been closed to vehicle traffic since April 2022. Up to 200 people a day cross the Russia-Lithuania border on foot, carrying shopping bags, suitcases, and other bags.

“The majority of those heading to Kaliningrad ...> are Lithuanian and Latvian citizens who have relatives living on the other side of the border [in Russia]. People also cross the border to tend to graves,” Rimantas Petrauskas, commander of the Pagėgiai border guard unit, told Lithuanian media outlet LRT.

One woman waiting in line to cross into Kaliningrad Oblast said she was flying to Moscow to visit her parents: “I live in Lithuania. My husband and our four children are Lithuanian. ...> I think it’s inhumane: my parents are already elderly and can’t come to see their grandchildren.”

A yellow Ecolines bus belonging to the international transport company is parked opposite the Queen Louise Bridge. Beside it, Zhenya, whose name has been changed, is sitting on the ground with a container of chopped vegetables on her lap. She lives in Latvia and crosses the Russia-Lithuania border in Sovetsk every few months before flying on to Moscow to see her husband.

“You can’t make a trip like this every day, or even once a week,” Zhenya said, taking a piece of celery from the container. “You spend hours waiting at the border, and the journey is difficult. It takes me two days to get to Moscow. The border guards question you in great detail: about your entire life, your views, relationships, politics, where you study, where you work, when and where you finished school, who your husband, father, and brother are, what language you speak, what you think. It’s very unpleasant.”

She returns from Moscow via Estonia because, after the war began, Lithuania banned travelers from bringing food products from Russia and Belarus into the country. Border guards will confiscate even a pack of cigarettes if it is Russian.

“If I could avoid making the trip, I would, but I don’t have any other choice. My husband has his work in Moscow, and I have my own things to take care of in Latvia. I don’t feel safe anywhere anymore, neither here nor there,” Zhenya said.

***

When Katya Medvedeva was young, she and her friends used to buy alcohol for holidays at a duty-free shop near the border.

Here is how it worked: they would pass through Russian border control and walk across the Queen Louise Bridge toward Lithuania. Halfway across the bridge, they would suddenly “remember” that they did not have visas, theatrically wring their hands, and turn back, naturally stopping at the duty-free shop on the way.

“The border guards knew about the trick, but everyone pretended to believe us,” Katya said.

When Katya was a child, her mother would send her to Lithuania to buy fresh bread. There were no borders between the Soviet republics back then. Panemunė still stands on the opposite bank of the Neman, just a few hundred meters from Sovetsk. 

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