A sleepy Baltic rail line gets a geopolitical wake-up call
As war rages in Ukraine, fueling ever-growing tensions between NATO and Russia, a sleepy Baltic railway station with no passengers and few trains this week found itself at the centre of a perilous new confrontation between East and West.
The station stands on the border between Lithuania, a NATO member and strong supporter of Ukraine, and Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave on the Baltic Sea stuffed with nuclear-capable missiles but physically disconnected from the rest of Russia.
From the Lithuanian town of Kybartai, decked with Ukrainian flags, the railway tracks extend west into Kaliningrad, bringing goods into the region, but also tracing a potentially volatile strategic fault line on the edges of Europe.
