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In official discourse, Kaliningrad is increasingly portrayed as Russia’s western stronghold: resilient, patriotic, and under constant external pressure. However, propaganda must also compete with people’s everyday experiences. Rising prices, logistical disruptions, security alerts, and the militarization of public life shape how residents perceive the consequences of Russia’s war.

The weakest point of the Kremlin's propaganda in the Kaliningrad Oblast is the clash between the official worldview and the everyday economy. One can repeat familiar formulas about 'unfriendly countries', 'sanctions pressure' and 'the threat from the West', while seeing that the usual food basket is becoming more expensive, familiar goods periodically disappear and the region is increasingly dependent on complex and costly logistics. In Kaliningrad, the war is felt through the price.

This does not mean that the region has experienced a permanent food crisis, but Kaliningrad lives in a state of heightened vulnerability to disruption. According to the Bank of Russia(opens in a new tab), in March 2026 annual inflation in Kaliningrad Oblast was 7.08 percent, compared to 5.86 percent for Russia as a whole. In December 2025, according to Rusprodsoyuz(opens in a new tab), the minimum monthly food basket in Kaliningrad Oblast cost 20 percent more than the Russian average.

Potatoes became a symbolic example. Under normal circumstances, this is an almost invisible product, part of the routine of daily stability. In June 2025, residents complained about the lack of potatoes in stores. Authorities explained that local stocks had run out and that the shortage in retail was later compensated by supplies from other regions and countries.

The authorities tried to present the situation as manageable – the shortage was not catastrophic, supplies would arrive, Belarus was ready to help, and local potatoes should not be exported, but should remain within the region. But the very fact that the governor discussed limiting the export of potatoes from the region, while the President of Belarus publicly promised (opens in a new tab) to supply Kaliningrad with food, shows that this was no longer an ordinary seasonal price fluctuation. For Kaliningrad, this is a reminder that if something breaks within the region, replacing it is more difficult, because any compensation depends on a route.

Logistical anxieties

It is logistics that makes the daily economy of Kaliningrad political. People's lives are made through corridors, ports, ferries, quotas, subsidies and bypasses. Maritime transport is an alternative to land transport through the EU, where sanctions restrict the transit of certain goods.

In 2026, this dependence became even more apparent. After sanctions against Lukoil, sea shipments of oil products on the Kaliningrad route tripled.(opens in new tab)to 61,000 tons. Since the end of 2025, the company has shifted almost all such cargoes from land transit to sea routes. This looks like adaptation, but it also shows dependence. The region relies on constant reconfiguration of routes.

For Kremlin propaganda, this situation is ambiguous. On the one hand, any difficulties can be explained by external pressure: sanctions, Lithuania, Poland, the EU, the ‘economic war of the West’. A clear example of this context appeared as early as 2025, when Federation Council Speaker Valentina Matviyenko said (opens in a new tab) that Kaliningrad needed special mechanisms to deal with ‘opposition and problems created by neighbors, “partners” in quotation marks’, again presenting the region’s economic and logistical difficulties as a result of hostile external pressure.

This allows public anger to be directed outwards rather than towards Moscow. On the other hand, the more daily life depends on subsidies, ferries, supplies from Belarus, imported potatoes and decisions from the federal center, the less convincing the image of a stable fortress becomes. This is the main paradox of Kaliningrad.

Sabotage, fear and militarization of everyday life

The next layer of propaganda is not just the image of an external threat, but its constant movement closer to everyday life. If the narrative of the besieged fortress explains why the region is supposedly under pressure from NATO and the West, then reports of sabotage and terrorist attacks make this threat almost internal. The danger is no longer somewhere in television geopolitics, but close at hand – in a communication tower, a gas pipeline, a road, a military convoy, a railway station or an infrastructure facility.

Over the past few years, the FSB reported numerous detentions of residents of the region suspected of alleged sabotage activities, including arson attacks on transport and communications infrastructure.

In 2025, such reports moved even closer to ordinary urban infrastructure. In February 2025, the Kaliningrad FSB reported(opens in a new tab)the detention of three Russian citizens who, according to the agency, had planned to set fire to the power supply equipment of a mobile communications base station “in the interests of Ukraine”. In May 2025, the FSB announced(opens in a new tab)the detention of a 25-year-old Russian citizen who was suspected of preparing a terrorist attack on the route of a military parade convoy during the events of May 9.

The key point here is not the number of cases, but the fact that Kaliningrad residents are encouraged to see danger not only in Ukraine, NATO or ‘hostile neighbors’, but also within their region – in people nearby, suspicious contacts, other people’s phones, money transfers, conversations and interest in infrastructure facilities. The war thus becomes not only an external conflict, but also an internal regime of suspicion.

A special element of this logic is the creation(opens in a new tab)in 2025 of the BARS-39 combat army reserve. Officially, the authorities explained it as a measure to strengthen the territorial defense of the region. Governor Alexey Besprozvannykh said(opens in a new tab)at that time he had turned to the Ministry of Defense after requests from residents and veterans' organizations, while the first wave of reservists underwent training at the Khmelyovka training ground. Later, the governor himself, members of the regional government and heads of municipalities joined BARS-39, and the official presentation emphasized that service and training would take place only within the region.

The political meaning here is more important than the military one. BARS-39 transforms anxiety into organized behavior. The population is invited not only to believe that the region is under threat, but to participate in a ritual of defense – to register, to attend training, to take a piece of land, to guard ‘one’s home.’ Even if most residents never join the reserve, the very fact of its public promotion normalizes the idea that Kaliningrad lives in a special defensive regime.

The psychology of drone warfare

The topic of drones occupies a special place. Unlike the Russian border regions that regularly face attacks from UAVs, the Kaliningrad Oblast does not have a direct air corridor from Ukraine through Russian territory. A possible Ukrainian drone flying to Kaliningrad would have to cross the airspace of other states or rely on a much more complicated scenario – for example, be launched from the sea, from within the region itself or as part of a local sabotage operation. That is why the threat from drones in Kaliningrad is perceived differently than in the Belgorod, Kursk or Rostov regions. Geographically, it is less visible and requires additional explanations.

On May 25, 2026, residents of the Kaliningrad Oblast received a warning.(opens in a new tab)of the ‘drone threat’ for the first time. According to messages from the emergency warning system and regional authorities, the ‘warning system was activated’ and Khrabrovo airport temporarily restricted arrivals and departures. At the same time, no public information was provided about a specific drone, its route, where it was detected, captured or shot down. This is crucial – it was not a confirmed attack or a downed aircraft, but a warning signal with an obscure factual basis.

Even if the true nature of the threat remains unclear, the signal itself produces the necessary psychological effect: the war suddenly appears not somewhere far away, but over Kaliningrad. Residents are invited to feel themselves part of the same danger zone in which the Russian border regions live. This creates a sense of being connected in the same war: the region may not be near the Ukrainian front, but it is nevertheless included in the general map of the war.

In this sense, the drone warning of May 25, 2026 became a continuation of the ‘besieged fortress’ narrative. And the less visible such a threat is from a geographical point of view, the more obvious its political function becomes – to arouse anxiety, strengthen trust in security agencies, justify the militarization of everyday life, and once again present Kaliningrad not as an enclave far from the front, but as the western border of Russia already involved in war.

The myth of the outpost mail: the price of reality

The Kaliningrad Oblast shows how Kremlin propaganda works in wartime not only through television narratives, but also through the reformatting of everyday life itself. Kaliningrad is increasingly presented not as a distinctive European border, but as Russia’s western outpost surrounded by enemies. In this logic, the war against Ukraine no longer looks like Moscow’s aggression and is presented instead as part of the supposedly necessary defense of Russia as a whole and Kaliningrad in particular.

But it is precisely the local experience that makes this construction tangible. Kaliningrad residents may be encouraged to imagine themselves living in a protected fortress, yet their daily lives increasingly tell them something else – the region has become more closed, more expensive, more dependent and more unsettling. Propaganda can direct irritation outward – towards Ukraine, NATO, Lithuania, Poland and the ‘collective West’ – but it cannot completely erase the personal feeling that life has deteriorated. That is why the main conflict in Kaliningrad is not between belief and disbelief in propaganda, but between the official mythology of the post and the real experience of people who see the price of war in shops, at borders, on supply routes and change, writes defense24.

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A concentration of NATO military aircraft was detected near the Kaliningrad region on August 18, according to reporting by Welt.

The airborne deployment included an E-3 AWACS airborne early warning and control aircraft, an American EA-37B Compass Call II electronic warfare plane, and an ARTEMIS II reconnaissance aircraft flying simultaneously in the airspace.

A NATO representative stated that the alliance conducted an operation led by the United States that involved American and Norwegian fighter jets, Polish ground units, the E-3 AWACS, and additional forces.

OSINTdefender analyst noted that while flights by E-3 AWACS and ARTEMIS II aircraft are common in the area, the inclusion of the newly deployed EA-37B electronic warfare aircraft suggests that the United States and NATO had a specific operational requirement for intelligence gathering or electronic warfare near Kaliningrad, according to Welt.

Bundeswehr University military expert Carlo Masala remarked, “One can only hope that Russia understood the message.”

The Kaliningrad region is considered one of Russia's most heavily militarized territories. The enclave houses air defense systems, missile complexes, and military infrastructure capable of posing a threat to Poland, the Baltic states, and NATO logistics routes.

As a result, the alliance views the territory as a critical component of Russian military capability along its eastern edge.

This non-standard NATO aviation movement occurred following warnings from US intelligence regarding risks of potential Russian aggression against an alliance member to test its commitment to collective defense, as reported by Welt.

Additionally, two weeks prior, Lithuanian officials stated that the Kremlin might consider targeting critical infrastructure in the Baltic states using captured Ukrainian drones to obscure direct involvement.

On August 19, 2026, NATO reconnaissance aircraft simultaneously carried out flights in two key directions—over the Black Sea and near Belarus.

According to the analytical channel Coffe Report, the American ARTEMIS II reconnaissance aircraft, a Bombardier Challenger 650 with registration number N159L, conducted a mission over the central part of the Black Sea, south of Crimea, to gather intelligence on Russian forces.

At the same time, a NATO AWACS aircraft with registration number LX-N90445 operated over the Baltic states and Central Europe alongside another E-3 AWACS and an aerial tanker to monitor military activity and coordinate aviation operations across the region.

Earlier in May, fighters participating in NATO’s Baltic Air Policing mission were reportedly scrambled three separate times over one week to identify and escort Russian aircraft accused of violating flight regulations.

In late April, Swedish and Danish fighter jets also intercepted Russian Tupolev Tu-22M bombers escorted by Su-35 fighters over the Baltic Sea.

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If I were writing a book about the U.S. war with Iran, I know exactly what the title would be. It would be President Trump’s social media post of April 5, 2026, directed at the leaders of Iran: “Open the [expletive] Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell — JUST WATCH!”

Wars are a crucible that very often exposes changes in the physics of the world around us — who has power, who doesn’t have power and how power is being wielded. Nothing better captures the new power equation produced by this war than Trump’s unhinged and obscene rant at the Iranian leadership for not bending to his bombs.

This new physics of war is equally present in the conflicts between Ukraine and Russia, Hezbollah and Israel, Hamas and Israel and the Houthis and everyone else. My summary of this new dynamic is that the small can now act really big, really accurately and really inexpensively. And while the big can also act really small, really accurately, it is far more expensive for them to do that while bearing the burden of vast legacy arms systems.

The net advantage, for the moment, seems to be to the small. That should keep you up at night, when you think how the emerging revolution in artificial intelligence will surely supercharge this trend, enabling the small to act even bigger, mightier and less expensively.

It’s not surprising that Trump is frustrated. After all, on March 11, less than two weeks after he and Israel started this latest bout of war with Iran with a large-scale bombing campaign, Trump declared: “We’ve won. Let me tell you, we’ve won. You know, you never like to say too early you won. We won. In the first hour it was over. But we won.”

He was right about one thing: Never say you won too early.

Trump didn’t realize that the Iranian government also has a say in when this war is won and lost. More important, and unlike Trump, Tehran had a Plan B for the morning after: use its newfound ability to act big, accurately and cheaply to seize control of the Strait of Hormuz — even though its military was a small fraction of the size of America’s and had been badly hammered.

I wish I could take delight in seeing our pompous, narcissistic, constantly bloviating president humbled by reality. But I truly do not — because this is getting scary. And it is going to get worse. The Iranians have inflicted real harm on America — on the battlefield and on our economy — the scale of which Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have been hiding.

Iran has been under economic sanctions, on and off, since 1979. Yet it has managed to develop an arsenal of sophisticated but relatively inexpensive missiles and drones that has enabled it to fight both Israel and the United States to something of a draw — and do some significant damage to American military assets in the region along the way. Consider just a few stories that you may not have noticed.

The reason the main U.S. aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf, the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, has sometimes run low on supplies to sustain its almost 5,700-person complement is that after the first day of the war, Iranian missiles and attack drones destroyed much of the U.S. supply base in Bahrain. “As it went up in smoke, so did a major logistics hub that the Navy has relied on for decades,” The Times reported. This forced Trump and the even more smug Hegseth to increase reliance on a base under British command on the island of Diego Garcia as its supply hub, which is roughly 2,700 miles from Bahrain. How was the Bahrain base so unprotected against Iranian missiles on the first day of the war? If that is not worth hauling Hegseth before Congress, I don’t know what is.

Or maybe you missed this story in the journal Defence Security Asia commenting on a CNN report that sometime in the early days of March, an Iranian missile destroyed a $500 million radar vital to running a THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) advanced missile defense system at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan. The attack signaled “a potentially transformative moment” in the “strategic contest” between Iran and the United States and Israel, the journal said.

A senior Jordanian official told me he was stunned to learn that the Iranians somehow managed to send their missile at the THAAD’s radar system by maneuvering it — in flight — to make a flanking attack on the radar and evade detection and interception. This was against the most sophisticated antimissile system in the U.S. arsenal!

John Arquilla, professor emeritus of defense analysis at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, explained to me that missile warfare is no longer just a matter of firing off a warhead on a predictable trajectory and then letting inertia and GPS smart guidance systems lead it to the target. The Russians have focused enormous resources on building missiles with midflight maneuverability, guided by better real-time information, increasingly propelled at hypersonic speeds, and capable of arriving from an angle a defender has not anticipated. Iran’s Fattah missiles reportedly have such capabilities, although it is still not clear whether they or drones took out the THAAD 500 miles from Iran.

“This is making the missile the pre-eminent weapon of the 21st century, with the potential to undermine deterrence and stability” in many different kinds of battles, said Arquilla, the author of the new book “The Troubled American Way of War: From Hiroshima to the Age of Algorithms.”

China has been deploying maneuverable hypersonic DF-17 missiles for several years now in its live-fire exercises in Chinese waters near Taiwan.

On March 3, two one-way attack drones struck the U.S. Embassy compound in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, at about 1:30 a.m. The first drone flew straight into the floor housing the C.I.A. station at the Riyadh embassy; the second drone flew directly into the entry hole created by the first, causing an extensive blast and a fire that burned for hours. Later reports suggested this Iranian attack may have been aided by Russian satellite intelligence provided by Vladimir Putin. Trump has seemingly done nothing about that.

For generations, Arquilla noted, wars were “won by mass and energy.” Warfare followed a simple physical law: The more distance you fired your projectile, the less accurate it was. So, distance had to be overcome “with mass and energy.” Not today. “Now wars are won by information,” said Arquilla.

And even the little guys now have access to it. You just have to look at how Hezbollah has inflicted significant harm on Israeli communities and the Israeli Army, with its huge U.S.-made military platforms; how badly Ukraine has bloodied a big bad Russia; and how Iran is fighting the United States and Israel to a stalemate to see how inexpensive, precision weapons buildable in a basement workshop with components that can be found on Amazon have severed the old link between range and accuracy.

Ukraine, Arquilla added, “has become a sea power without a traditional navy. It has used drone boats and armed Jet Skis” to push Russia’s conventional Black Sea fleet far enough away from Ukraine’s coastline so it can keep exporting its grain and fertilizer to world markets.

These new technologies allow “the many and the small” — Iranians, Houthis, Hezbollah, Hamas — “to slip the heavy punches of their opponents, because they are well hidden and can strike back with accurate blows of their own,” Arquilla said. The U.S. military, meanwhile, has just 11 big lumbering divisions and 11 carrier groups.

That is why defenders now have a real advantage over attackers, Arquilla concluded. Trump and Hegseth kept focusing on “scaling up the war” — adding more tempo and more tonnage — and the Iranians focused on “scaling out the war,” hiding small units with precision missiles in more places and attacking U.S. bases and Arab oil facilities all over the Gulf.

“Their job is to survive long enough to shoot and scoot. On land, a few big formations of Abrams tanks matter less than the many and the small with cheap weapons they can build and modify in a week,” Arquilla said.

These new weapons amplify another advantage the small have over the big: They don’t have to win. They just have to avoid losing. We have to win, end the war, go home and never look back. Good luck with that now.

Before the Iranians and Hezbollah get too smug, though, they should remember the other half of my equation: While the small can now act really big, the big can now act really small. On the first day of the war, Israeli airstrikes with precision weapons — aided by U.S. intelligence — killed over 40 senior Iranian leaders gathered in a high-level leadership meeting in a single compound in Tehran. In other words, with precise information, Israel wiped out much of Iran’s national security elite with one shot.

And then there was the Israeli pager attack on Hezbollah. On Sept. 17 and 18, 2024, Israel detonated the pagers and other hand-held electronic devices used by Hezbollah members, fighters, officers, medics and civilian supporters, killing dozens of people and wounding some 3,000 others. An estimated 1,500 Hezbollah fighters were reportedly put out of action because of injuries, mostly affecting their hands, faces and hips. Using a relatively small quantity of explosives and a huge dollop of information, Israel killed and wounded a significant number of Hezbollah fighters in a few hours.

The U.S.-Israel Stuxnet attack on Iran’s Natanz enrichment facility that began in 2009 was another version of this. Instead of bombing the facility, the United States and Israel inserted a small computer worm — a few lines of code — to disable a big number of Iran’s IR-1 centrifuges, though the centrifuges were quickly replaced and the disruption was ultimately minimal. (The United States and Israel have never acknowledged responsibility for the virus.) That was the big acting small, using just malware, but you can bet that the development of that code, and the whole joint operation, cost a lot of money.

What is truly alarming today is how easy it is becoming for the small to act big — and by “small,” I don’t just mean in size, but also in age. A teenager with a laptop, a Starlink connection and an open-weight A.I. model can now disrupt a municipal water or power system by identifying and exploiting old software vulnerabilities.

So don’t be surprised if one day soon you hear your mayor sounding like Trump: “Turn my water back on, you crazy …”

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

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The Alliance’s main objectives in such a scenario would be to stop the Russian offensive and significantly weaken Russia’s military capabilities. The plan is outlined in NATO’s Land Warfighting Concept, which was developed under the leadership of US Army Major Andrew Pingrey.

NATO would first seek to stop missile strikes

According to Bild, if Russia attacked the Baltic states, Moscow could use missiles and drones while also launching a ground offensive involving tanks.

NATO's first task in such a scenario would be to suppress the missile strikes. The Alliance plans to use fighter jets, missiles and drones to disable Russian missile systems.

One of the targets identified in this scenario is the Kaliningrad region, where Russia has deployed a significant number of air defense and missile systems.

NATO plans to create an 'autonomous zone' along the border

At the same time, NATO plans to establish what it calls an "autonomous zone" along its borders with Russia and Belarus. The idea is for it to serve as a defensive barrier between Russian troops and NATO forces.

Under the concept, the zone would be defended primarily by drones and unmanned military vehicles operating against the enemy. NATO troops would not be directly stationed there.

If Russian forces continued their advance, unmanned systems would be used to contain and stop them.

Alliance plans to strike Russian military logistics

The next stage, according to Bild, could involve striking targets inside Russia itself.

The focus would be on military logistics infrastructure supporting Russian forces. Potential targets include airfields, military factories, bridges and railways used to transport troops and supplies to the battlefield.

The goal would be to significantly disrupt Russian supply lines and make it harder for Moscow to organize subsequent waves of attacks.

NATO wants to work with Putin's opponents

According to the concept, the Alliance also plans to rely on Russians who oppose Vladimir Putin.

Another element of the plan is the creation of an "air bridge." Through it, aircraft would deliver drones and robotic systems into Russia, which could be used, among other things, to destroy military bases and airfields.

At the same time, the concept emphasizes that NATO does not seek to conquer Russia. The goal would be to stop and push back advancing Russian forces to Russia’s borders.

Putin is supposed to know NATO's plans

One notable feature of the concept is that NATO military planners do not consider it necessary to keep the plans completely secret. The Alliance's logic is that deterrence works more effectively when a potential adversary knows exactly what response it would face if it attacked a NATO member.

Thus, the concept is intended not only to establish the Alliance's course of action in the event of war, but also to serve as a warning to Russia about the possible consequences of aggression against NATO member states.

Context

Some NATO countries are already actively preparing for a possible Russian attack. Warsaw has information suggesting that Moscow could soon launch another large-scale provocation.

"We are preparing for war, hoping that it will never begin," Poland's deputy defense minister said.

Meanwhile, Latvia believes Russia has already launched a hybrid war against EU countries, seeking to intimidate states that support Ukraine. Western intelligence agencies are currently investigating a series of acts of sabotage, attempted attacks, arson incidents and other provocations.