It must be admitted that we know rather little about how the Kaliningrad Region is perceived from outside, even by its closest neighbours. It may well be that Kaliningraders themselves, heading off for the weekend to Gdańsk in Poland or to the Smelt Festival in Palanga in Lithuania, are not much concerned about how Kaliningrad is seen in the not-so-distant abroad. At that moment they have quite other things on their minds.
However, if we ask why Poles and Lithuanians on their trips to Kaliningrad often go no further than the nearest petrol station, thoughts about the external image of our region will arise of their own accord. In this context, it is above all the Polish view of Kaliningrad that is interesting, since with the Lithuanian side things are clearly not working out for us in cross-border cooperation so far.
The role of local border traffic in shaping Kaliningrad's external image
Undoubtedly, the question of the Kaliningrad Region's external image became especially topical after the local border traffic (LBT) regime was introduced. The LBT project made it possible to increase the number and quality of all kinds of contacts between Poles and Russians, and so it should have helped to change the way each side perceives the other. One of the aims in implementing the project was to use it not as carte blanche to "storm" Biedronka, but as a means of establishing good-neighbourly relations, breaking down the wall of mistrust and negative stereotypes about Kaliningrad, and so on.
After the collapse of the USSR, when the Kaliningrad Region found itself an exclave in need of special programmes of economic, social, cultural and other development — programmes that never materialised — it began to turn into a neglected region in an extremely uncertain position.
The image of a periphery, a backward territorial entity, a former Soviet "military base" quickly and firmly took root in the minds of the inhabitants of neighbouring states, and often of Kaliningraders themselves.
The accession of Poland and Lithuania to the EU, which locked Kaliningrad tightly inside the Schengen "ring", only reinforced this negative image.
Of course, as the saying goes, "everything flows, everything changes", and although the Kaliningrad Region is not developing at an outstanding pace, our economic and social situation is gradually improving, so the region's external image ought to be developing in the same direction. Yet, strange as it may seem, the negative image of Kaliningrad remains as unshakeable as ever.
The image of the Kaliningrad Region in Polish political debate
The Polish side, despite the expanded opportunities for communication with the Kaliningrad Region, is not distinguished by a balanced perception of our region either.
One example is the debate that unfolded during the drafting of the experimental development strategy for the Baltic region. The Polish side noted that the Kaliningrad Region, an exclave beset by social, economic and environmental problems linked above all to the presence of military bases and weapons in the region, is a destabilising factor in the Baltic. During the discussion of the Strategy, Bogdan Klich, Poland's defence minister at the time, also remarked that the Kaliningrad Region was a "ticking time bomb", pointing to the militarisation of the region and the large number of residents infected with AIDS.
An entirely similar image of Kaliningrad was presented in the parliamentary debates in Poland on introducing the LBT regime. However, the economic profit that the Polish side was already calculating at the time proved stronger than the "horror stories" about Kaliningrad.
Whether this negative image is broadcast deliberately, or whether it is a set of entrenched stereotypes that prevent people from seeing the Kaliningrad Region as a fully-fledged partner and a platform for sociocultural dialogue, is a separate and complicated question.
The Polish media on Kaliningrad
First of all, it is important to understand how the image of Kaliningrad is formed in Poland and why it has a predominantly negative colouring.
Firstly, we should look at what the Polish media write about the Kaliningrad Region. It must be said that over the past two years they have done so often, but the content of the publications is monotonous. An analysis of the issues concerning our region that are covered in the Polish media yields a not very rosy image of the Kaliningrad Region.
One could come up with a single headline that would cover most of the material about our region: "Kaliningrad — Russia's oppressive military outpost".
"Russia is arming Kaliningrad", "Kaliningrad — the most militarised place in Europe", "A threat right across the Polish border" — these are just a few examples of the headlines of articles about Kaliningrad published this year alone. As for the content of all these materials, it can be reduced to a few words: "threat", "missiles", "war".
That's how things are. There are practically no articles about the FIFA World Cup or the Curonian Spit. Of course, one could object that this is the current foreign-policy situation and there is, in fact, nothing else to write about. However, information about Kaliningrad in the Polish media in previous years differed from today's only in the type of weapons the journalists listed.
The second most "popular" image of Kaliningrad broadcast in the Polish media is that of a poor, post-Soviet city.
Just a couple of months after the LBT project was launched, the first "reactions" of Poles who had visited Kaliningrad began to appear in the Polish media. A portal extremely popular in the Tricity (Gdańsk, Gdynia, Sopot) published the impressions of a certain Ms Julita from her first visit to the Kaliningrad Region.
"I was struck by the poverty of this region, visible at every step. Residential buildings in a shabby state, apartment blocks straight out of a Japanese horror film. The atmosphere is very oppressive. I decided to go back home on the very day I arrived, even though I had originally planned to stay longer.
The disappointment was huge, and the value of my trip in terms of tourism and leisure is doubtful. I can't say I regret it. Thanks to this trip I now know why there are so many Russians in Poland and no Poles in Russia. Even the sun shines brighter at home."
Every Kaliningrader can decide for themselves what in this statement is close to reality and what is not. It is only worth noting that many examples of similar "reviews" and notes about the Kaliningrad Region could be cited.
Of course, it would be unfair not to note that the Polish media do carry articles of a neutral character about Kaliningrad, capable to some extent of influencing a change in our region's image. However, it must be said that even in articles of a positive character, mostly devoted to the LBT and how profitable this regime is for the Polish borderland, Kaliningrad appears not as an actor in a sociocultural dialogue with Poland but as a client, an active shopper or, more crudely still, a consumer.
How residents of Poland perceive the Kaliningrad Region
When speaking of the Polish view of Kaliningrad, we should consider as a source of information not only the "fourth estate" in the form of the media, but also research data. After the LBT regime was introduced, at the end of 2013 the Centre for Polish-Russian Dialogue and Understanding conducted a public opinion survey among residents of the powiats (counties) covered by the local border traffic programme.
According to the results of the survey, 73% of residents of the Polish borderland had never been to Kaliningrad.
Most respondents said they were sure that the Kaliningrad Region had little tourist appeal and lacked tourist infrastructure.
17% of respondents had visited Kaliningrad as tourists, but they remembered the city for its "neglect" and "greyness". At the same time, a small share of respondents who had been to the Kaliningrad Region several times noted a trend of positive change in the region. The main fears of the borderland residents surveyed concerned security in Kaliningrad: respondents mentioned organised crime and the "police mafia".
It is worth noting that the militarisation of the Kaliningrad Region, so actively described by the Polish media, does not frighten the residents of the Polish borderland at all, according to the results of this survey.
Undoubtedly, the set of image characteristics presented above is nothing unexpected, since it is entirely standard and largely a legacy of the post-Soviet period. However, the problem lies not in the "horror stories" about Kaliningrad broadcast by the Polish media, which undoubtedly influence Poles, but in the fact that we do not even try to present an alternative image of our region.
Our region's contribution to shaping its external image
Two conclusions suggest themselves here: either we agree with the Polish ideas about Kaliningrad, or we don't care, or, perhaps worse still, we both agree and don't care.
The absence of any serious attempts to change the image of a grey, neglected military outpost that has taken shape over the past 20 years, to show the many sides of the region and its openness to cooperation, shows that at present we are unable to be an effective platform for sociocultural dialogue, "Russia's calling card" — that is, we are neither ready for it nor striving for it. And the problem lies by no means in what they think of us "on the other side of the border", but in what we ourselves know and understand about ourselves, what we tell, to whom, and why.
Much can be said about information wars and the deliberate creation of a negative image of Russia as a whole or, as in the case at hand, of Kaliningrad. However, it is worth looking at what we ourselves have done and are doing today in information policy so that people, at least in neighbouring Poland, also learn about the Kaliningrad Region from us.
We can start with the obvious — with the Polish press, the very press absorbed in articles about Russia's military base. How often can you find advertising about Kaliningrad in it, about the events taking place here, the sights, the museums? Never. There is simply none. Television and radio are not even worth mentioning.
Perhaps such information "heights" in promoting an alternative image of Kaliningrad are beyond our reach for now, and decades must pass before we realise the need for our own presence in the information space of the Polish borderland.
In that case it is worth turning our gaze to our own information space. As an experiment, let us open any website containing the fullest information about Kaliningrad, its culture, history and people. For example, the website of the Regional Tourist Information Centre of the Kaliningrad Region. You can read information on it even in Chinese, but not in Polish. The same applies to most Kaliningrad museum websites; at best, and rarely, we will find publications in English and German.
The answer to the question of where an ordinary Pole can learn about a different Kaliningrad, unlike the one broadcast to him by the national media, is obvious: almost nowhere.
We could go on listing all the gaps in our information policy and analysing why Poles are "scared" of Kaliningrad. However, it seems far more important to start by simply admitting that the Kaliningrad Region is in an information vacuum that it has created for itself through its own inaction. Poland, in this case, fills that vacuum itself with whatever content it sees fit.
Translated from Russian with the help of AI (Claude, Anthropic), October 2026.
