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Comment by ulzeraj | Hacker News Reader

I heard Russian missiles in Kaliningrad can reach any place in Poland and Lithuania. I wonder how did they managed to keep that piece of land surrounded by ex-soviet republics that are basically not very fond of Russia to say the least.

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Very easy, Baltic republics were in no way capable of waging war right after the independence, let alone get out with any hope of territorial gains.

And historically, USSR always been placing military members from ethnic minorities into weakest, and most "cannon-fodderry" military units, predominantly foot infantry, and motorised.

Even ethnic Russians from more far away places were likely never to see any advanced military hardware.

Thanks. That was an honest question. No idea why I got downvoted multiple times.

Depends on the ethnic minority - the USSR had very fine-grained distinctions between "reliable" and "unreliable" ethnic groups. For example, Armenians (because of their hostility to NATO-member Turkey) were very much allowed into combat units, which gave them their enormous advantage against Azerbaijan in the early-90s wars. Ukrainians and Belarusians were also considered part of the "core" USSR ethnic groups.

Whereas the Baltic states were only conquered in 1940, and were considered extremely unreliable.

I guess Ukrainians could be named "core" USSR ethnic group but Ukrainian Insurgent Army had an ongoing war against Soviets actively during 1942–1949 and sporadically up until 1956.

Sure. But the Red Army certainly trusted most Ukrainians enough to integrate them into elite combat units.

"Anywhere in Poland or Lithuania" is a 500km range. Probably half the world's militaries could launch missiles that far, plus some non-state actors - of course it's in range for Russia.

Kaliningrad's original population was German. After WW 2 the red army displaced them, and Stalin settled ethnic Russians in the city. So unlike the areas around it, it's truly made up of Russians.

After the collapse of the USSR, none of the states around Russia were in any condition to confront the Russian Federation itself. All of the little post-Soviet wars were among the smaller Republics.

The land originally belonged to Germany, who made a vow to never expand their borders beyond a certain eastern point after reunification. So only Russia really had a claim to it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_the_Final_Settlement...

Because they likely would have pulled a 'Ukraine' on Lithuania if it came to that.

although Lithuania is both in the EU and NATO which would make it a very different proposition

It is now, but it wasn't always so.

Well the fact that Kaliningrad is part of the Russian federations means that they did pulled an Ukraine on Poland and/or Lithuania.

I'm not an expert and by any means I'm giving opinions here but I thought Crimea, South Ossetia and Abkhazia were territories were Russia at least has an historical or cultural excuse to claim. Again, not that I agree on those claims. On the other hand Kaliningrad was never part of Russia. It belonged to Poland and then to Germany. It was annexed by the Soviet Union in 1945.

I guess the reason Kaliningrad exists is that Poland and the Baltiks were in no means to fight for territory and Germany doesn't care.

It was directly annexed into Russia during the war when the various states didn’t exist in a meaningful way, and was ethnically cleansed.

The other territories vary... iirc Crimea was subject to a treaty in the 90s, etc. End of The day the relative power imbalances and international interest tend to rule the day.

It was never part of Poland, unless you're going waaaay back to the Teutonic knights. Even then, it was controlled by an ethnically-German ruling dynasty with its power base outside of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, similar to Normandy in late medieval France.

In the aftermath of WWII, Germans in East Prussia were expelled, and the territory was split 50/50 between the USSR and Poland. No state other than Germany has a pre-WW2 claim, and they formally renounced that claim in the final peace treaty around 1990.

Kaliningrad was annexed into the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic ie. Russia proper end of WW II. Any surrounding countries literally would have had to start a war with Russia to occupy it.

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