Lithuania, 2015. Last pictures from Lithuania conscription day, the battle of Kalkiske, and a joint

Lithuania, 2015. Last pictures from Lithuania conscription day, the battle of Kalkiske, and a joint US-Lithuanian army practice.

In 2015 I went with my big love and expert reporter Prune Antoine #plumaberlin and Gil Skorwid on a research trip about the remilitarisation of the Kaliningrad region for #Mediapart and later won the #prixchaffajon for multimedia reportage.

After two days we got kicked out of Kaliningrad by the secret service who followed us all the time because we had no proper journalist Visa. So we went on to Lithuania and Poland who are direct neighbours to Russia / Kaliningrad. Both were afraid of what was coming after the annexation of Crimea.

Poland built surveillance towers along the whole border of Kaliningrad and has military units stationed near the border. Lithuania just introduced conscription under President Dalia Grybauskaitė.

The film maker Aleksandras Matonis restaged the battle of Kalniske between the NKDW forces and Lithuanian partisans after WW2 to reshape Lithuanian fighting spirit because history books said Lithuanian lost drastically which he thought to be a Russian myth. The US Army had a training center for the Lithuanian army and the NATO has their quick response air force stationed in the Baltic states. They reported daily flights from russian mainland to Kaliningrad without transponder so they had to scramble their fighters to check every flight. But nobody knew what’s inside Kaliningrad. And this enclave is in missile range of a lot of the mayor cities of Europe.

It has been 6 years now and all of a sudden all the fears become real in #Ukraine. Its horrible and i hope its over soon and Russian forces are withdrawing from Ukrainian soil.

#militarisation #warinukraine #peaceinukraine #military #kaliningrad #russia #prixchaffajon #lithuania #army #soldiers
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