Residents of the westernmost region of Russia have been asked to send the Consul of Lithuania in the city of Soviets Bronius Makauskas. He got caught driving drunk, and besides, he actively promotes the idea of ??transferring the Kaliningrad region to the possession of the Republic of Lithuania. A local television station recently published a story telling how Makauskas diligently pursues an ideological line among the local intelligentsia, according to which Kaliningrad and the surrounding lands - part of "historical Lithuania" and within the Russian Federation are illegally. In particular, the consulate sponsors exhibitions on this subject in the local history museum of Sovetsk, Vzglyad reports.. The idea that the Kaliningrad region should belong to the Lithuanians is extremely popular in the Baltic republic. There, this region, which became part of the RSFSR in 1945, and before that was part of Germany, is called "Little Lithuania", and Kaliningrad on all Lithuanian maps is designated as Karalauchus. Propaganda activities in the Russian region are financed by the Lithuanian state budget organization "Council for Minor Lithuania". In 1995 year. the organization promulgated a memorandum demanding the demilitarization of the "Karalauchus region" and the "return" of this "historical Baltic land" to Lithuania. At the same time, the first president of the country Vytautas Landsbergis said that the ownership of the Kaliningrad region of Russia did not receive sufficient justification. The statements that the "Karalauchus region" is the cradle of Lithuanian culture is being made by the current president of Lithuania Dalia Grybauskaite. And the ideologist of Lithuanian nationalism, ex-speaker of the parliament Romualdas Ozolas called for the creation of a new "Baltic republic". "Having abandoned the Munich tradition of political correctness, Lithuania can, using an absolutely legal international language, begin to present the aspirations of the inhabitants of the province of Karalauchus to become an independent republic," he wrote in one of the articles. Claims of Vilnius to the Russian region intensified after the events in Ukraine in 2014. In that year, an analyst at the State Center for Eastern European Studies, Laurinas Kasciunas (now a deputy of the Seimas), said that the decision of the Potsdam conference of 1945 Koenigsberg was transferred to the USSR only for 50 years.

Now, he said, the United States and Britain should restore "historical justice". Such a step would be a "worthy retribution" of Russia for "aggression in the Crimea and the Donbas". In January 2017. the deputy of the Seimas Linas Balsis suggested that Lithuania or the EU leadership take up the issue of rejection of the Kaliningrad region from the Russian Federation, or, better, both. "The time of using the former lands of East Prussia for Russia ended. Kaliningrad was not given to Russia for perpetual use in Potsdam or Helsinki. It was said: we give it under the administration of the USSR until the final peace treaty is signed in Europe, "he said.. Finally, in April of this year, the European Parliament deputy from Lithuania Antanas Guoga proclaimed that "Kaliningrad has never belonged to Russia". The Russian authorities have not commented on such attempts of the Lithuanian side. In part, this is the right strategy: the demands for the transfer of the Kaliningrad region to Lithuania are so absurd that it does not make sense to discuss them seriously.