Polish FM proposes aggressive NATO drills near Kaliningrad — SkimNews
Get the Geopolitics newsletter
Daily geopolitics — wars, elections, sanctions, the diplomatic moves that move markets. Free.
- Radosław Sikorski, Poland's deputy prime minister and foreign minister, proposed at the Sept. 11 Yalta European Strategy conference in Kyiv that NATO hold aggressive drills near Kaliningrad to force Russia to withdraw troops from Ukraine, noting the exclave currently has "hardly any troops" stationed there.
- Sikorski said exercises should create uncertainty for Putin about NATO intentions while ruling out any offensive action against Kaliningrad, and pointed to his recent visit to a Polish base in Latvia where "there are no troops on the other side" as evidence the threat is credible.
- A 2023 U.S. Center for Naval Analyses report found pre-war Kaliningrad hosted the 11th Army Corps with up to 18,000 troops; Lithuania's defense ministry estimated "several thousand" troops were present for last September's Zapad 2025 exercises.
- Poland is preparing to host the first Coalition of the Willing drills with British and French forces while advancing its 10 billion zloty ($2.7 billion) East Shield initiative to build fortifications along the roughly 800 km border with Kaliningrad and Belarus.
Why it matters: Sikorski's proposal reframes the war as a multi-theater contest where NATO can squeeze Russia by threatening Kaliningrad. The pre-war garrison of up to 18,000 troops (now "hardly any") gives the strategy empirical teeth — Moscow already drained that exclave to fight in Ukraine, and renewed pressure could force painful trade-offs between defending the enclave and reinforcing the front.
Ask SkimNews
