Putin Balks at Visa Plan for Kaliningrad

MOSCOW —  President Vladimir V. Putin took a tough stance Wednesday against European Union plans to require visas for Russians crossing EU countries on their way to and from the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, underscoring Moscow’s fears that the isolated, formerly German territory might one day be wrested from it.

The EU has said that visas will be needed after Poland and Lithuania, which lie between Kaliningrad and the main part of Russia, are brought into the EU in the next few years.

But the prospect of Russians needing visas to travel from one part of their country to another touches a delicate nerve in Moscow. Even an EU promise Wednesday to build closer economic ties and to regard Russia as a “free-market economy” did not mollify Putin at the start of an EU-Russian summit in Moscow.

“It is no exaggeration to say that our overall relations with the European Union depend on how this issue of vital importance to Russians is resolved,” Putin said, referring to Kaliningrad.

Russia has suggested that there be visa-free transit aboard sealed trains, or that some sort of corridor be created in which Russians could travel without visas. But neither Lithuania nor Poland likes the idea.

The dispute was a note of discord in what had been a love fest between Putin and the West in the past week. It follows Putin’s successful summit with President Bush last weekend and the formal establishment Tuesday of a Russia-NATO council designed to give Russia a strong voice in Western security decisions.

Launching talks with European Commission President Romano Prodi and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, Putin said Russian residents and goods must be allowed to travel freely into and out of Kaliningrad even after Poland and Lithuania join the EU.

But for the EU officials, preserving strong borders for the union is a fundamental issue.

They fear that if Russian citizens could travel into the EU without visas, a path might be opened for illegal immigration and the smuggling of drugs, weapons, prostitutes and other contraband into EU member states.

A European Union spokeswoman in Moscow, Silvia Kofler, acknowledged that the issue of Kaliningrad remained thorny. “We have agreed to disagree,” she said.

But Putin’s stance is likely to be a hit with Russians.

“What the president has said is that not only will we keep Kaliningrad, but we will continue to go there freely,” said former Foreign Minister Andrei V. Kozyrev. “He should be given credit.”

Another analyst said that losing Kaliningrad could set off a domino effect, with other regions of Russia wanting to break away.

“Kaliningrad is not so valuable to Moscow as a territory, but more as a precedent that will determine whether Russia disintegrates or remains within its present boundaries,” said Dmitry Furman at the Institute of Europe, an affiliate of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

“It is clear that if Kaliningrad breaks away, then at some point in the future the maps of Russia and Moscow will end up showing precisely the same territory,” he said.

Already, Russian news media have reported on budding separatist sentiments inside Kaliningrad, even though the territory is almost totally ethnic Russian.

The German-speaking population was ousted and ethnic Russians settled there after the region was captured from Germany in World War II.

Alexei V. Kuznetsov of The Times’ Moscow Bureau contributed to this report.