Sir, – Last week's article by Chris Agee (Opinion, October 27th) suggesting that Kaliningrad oblast could be the next flashpoint in current tensions between Russia and the West is interesting.
However, his call to “bleed and crash the Russian economy” is highly provocative and shows scant regard for the plight of the Russian people in the economic chaos that would ensue.
Nevertheless, the use of selective economic sanctions against the current Russian leadership is a different matter, and should be used in the wider context, to confront the twin threat of Russian military action and cyber attack.
Kaliningrad [a 220sq km exclave on the Baltic sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania] does not have to be a flashpoint. Existing arrangements are working and the Russian navy is not being impeded by the West in its use of the only ice-free port at Baltiysk.
Moreover, the strategic importance of the latter will lesson as climate change opens up other ports in northern Russia to all-year use.
NATO deployments of military assets to reassure, in particular, Poland and Lithuania, are necessary but should not be at such levels as to threaten the Russian presence in the oblast. The Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova are not in the EU or NATO but they are in “our area of interest”.
It is in our interest that their sovereignty will be respected. Crimea is a random domino of history which should never have been incorporated into the Ukraine in the first place.
– Yours, etc,
Col DORCHA LEE (retd)
Navan,
Co Meath.