Kaliningrad, Russia
Russia launched a ferry service this week to connect the tiny province of Kaliningrad to the mainland. Kaliningrad, the small patch of territory between Poland and Lithuania that Russia seized in World War II, found itself isolated when its neighbors joined the E.U. in 2004. Since then, Russia has complained that Lithuania has been making it hard for Russians to travel to and from the enclave. The ferry, which takes one day to sail from a port near St. Petersburg, will enable Russia to ship goods to Kaliningrad without applying for Lithuanian travel documents. The Lithuanians argue that their borders need to be tightly guarded, because Kaliningrad is a nest of drug dealing and organized crime.
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