Type the word "Kaliningrad" into the search box on The New York Times website and see for yourself. If you do not set a time range, the first article you find will be one from 3 July 1946, "Koenigsberg Is Now Kaliningrad". True, you cannot read it online: you have to pay for access to the archive or buy the individual article, which you will then receive as a PDF file. The same goes for other articles from that period.
At the time the paper's journalists closely followed the changes that turned East Prussia into the Kaliningrad region. There are articles about the renaming of the region's towns and villages, about the region's establishment as the base of the Baltic Fleet, about the resettlement of Soviet collective farmers to the region.
But, so as not to get lost in history, I limited the time frame to the last two or three years. The search results for this period left me a little disappointed. What is the main difference between American journalists' interest in Kaliningrad and that of European – or, chiefly, German – journalists? In The New York Times, most articles mentioning Kaliningrad are devoted to military matters. Apart from these, there is one article about local border traffic. And there is one about a Coca-Cola advertising campaign which, not knowing what to do with Crimea on its festive map of Russia, also erased the Kaliningrad region and the Kurils from it while it was at it. Kaliningrad also turns up in a review of Martin Cruz Smith's novel "Tatiana". The novel is partly set in the Kaliningrad region, though the book has not been published in Russian. But the reviewer, summing up the hero's adventures in our region, advises avoiding Kaliningrad as a travel destination. There was, of course, also a short note about Victoria Nuland's meeting with Vladislav Surkov at the presidential residence in Pionersky.
The most recent item on the paper's website that mentions Kaliningrad is a letter to the editor sent by a German reader from Wiesbaden. In it he responded to an article on the Crimea situation published at the end of December of the previous year. Jane Mauren Mulum (the name of the reader and author of the letter), replying to the earlier analysis, writes that the annexation of Crimea cannot be justified, because the Germans, for example, could say that they want Königsberg back, since it too has a sacred significance for Germans.
In April 2015 The New York Times published an article headlined "Where Poles and Russians Meet, Ideals and Profits Clash".
In it the journalist Rick Lyman, with the help of the paper's Warsaw correspondent Joanna Berendt, presents the dilemmas facing Polish businesspeople working in the local border traffic zone as a result of the events in Ukraine.
Using the example of Jan Hermanowicz, a restaurant owner from Sopot who hung a notice on the door of his establishment saying "We do not serve Russians", the article shows how opinions about sanctions against Russia were divided even in the part of Poland where Russians are frequent guests (and customers!). Jan Hermanowicz told the American paper's correspondent how other businesspeople begged him to take the notice off the door, fearing that Russian tourists would stop visiting their establishments too. He recalls a Russian prosecutor who threatened him with a lawsuit, and a number of politicians who assured Russian guests that, despite this incident, they would always be welcomed with joy and respect in the Tricity (the area around Gdańsk). In the end Mr Hermanowicz took down the notice, but put up a banner portraying the Russian president in a very negative light. Apart from this story, fairly well known in our border region, there follow the statements typical of reports on local border traffic from local authorities and border and customs officials, emphasising the unqualified success of the visa-free regime. The mayor of Gdańsk says that Russians are perhaps the best customers among the city's visitors. Figures are given for the permits issued and border crossings. The article would not have been complete without a mention of the hit by the Kaliningrad band Parowóz glorifying shopping in Poland and two particular chains of shops. It is a pity that the correspondent lacked the strength, energy, knowledge – or perhaps simply an assignment from the editors – to cross the border and find out what the other side thinks.
The only Russian who speaks in the report is the Russian Consul General in Gdańsk, Aleksandr Karachevtsev, and even he speaks as if not on his own behalf:
"I have never heard a single critical word from my Polish colleagues about the [local border traffic] programme. I would say that perhaps some local authorities no longer feel such enthusiasm about the programme, but they are all very interested in its continuation".
The report ends with a statement by the director of the Galeria Bałtycka shopping centre (Gdańsk), who advises sticking to business and avoiding difficult subjects.
But, as I have already noted, the lion's share of New York Times articles and items mentioning Kaliningrad are military news.
For American journalists the Kaliningrad region is above all a Russian military base. That is why the word "Kaliningrad" has been appearing quite often in The New York Times recently.
On 11 January The New York Times quoted the commander of the US Air Forces, Frank Gorenc, as saying that the deployment of missile defence systems worried him greatly. According to him, Russia is massing weapons in Kaliningrad that will restrict NATO air forces' access to part of the airspace over Poland and the Baltic states. In the context of Lithuania joining the eurozone, security issues are also mentioned, and the Lithuanians consider the growing amount of military hardware in the Kaliningrad region the main source of concern. The well-known story of a hacker attack on the website of the Lithuanian military headquarters is also described. The hackers posted information on the Lithuanian site about NATO exercises supposedly due to take place in Poland and the Baltic states. Part of this fake information was a report describing the exercises as a test of a scenario in which NATO troops seize the Kaliningrad region. The idea that the Kaliningrad region could become a source of destabilisation on the Baltic coast is not new. As early as the end of 2014 the Bloomberg news agency spoke of such a scenario in its predictions for 2015. Fortunately, the scenario did not come true.
The quantity of weapons and the number of troops in the Kaliningrad region are increasing – that is a fact.
And the fact that Americans, who feel responsible for the fate of NATO and its allies, are watching closely what is happening in our region should not come as any particular surprise to anyone.
Nevertheless, it is striking that one of the world's best-known news outlets, published continuously since 1851 – The New York Times – has not devoted a single article in the last two or three years to cultural issues or to the process of restoring the memory of these lands' pre-war history, and has not sent a single reporter to the region. Americans, of course, are not Germans and harbour no sentiments towards East Prussia; nor are they neighbours, who are always interested in what is happening next door. The USA is far away. Evidently this is the only reason for such a one-sided picture of the Kaliningrad region and such one-sided coverage of events connected with it. Seventy years ago The New York Times wrote that Königsberg had become Kaliningrad. They still have a chance to write about how Kaliningrad today is trying more and more to preserve the little that remains of Königsberg in it.
Translated from Russian with the help of AI (Claude, Anthropic), October 2026.
