Lithuania's tough line apparently too tough for the EU

So Kaliningrad lives to see another day. It looks like the EU has decided Lithuania's effective blockade of Kaliningrad, the Russian enclave wedged between Poland and Lithuania, is too aggressive and doesn't want Moscow to think it's a deliberate policy to stop all goods trains reaching this bizarre piece of land that was given to Russia from the post-Second World War Postdam agreement between the leaders of the US, UK and Soviet Union. Moscow will see this as a climbdown and gain satisfaction from it. Lithuania was certainly taking the sanctions measures to the limit by banning all train convoys rather than just those shipping in sanctioned products but wow didn't it upset Moscow. Putin sent his security chief Nikolai Patrushev to Kaliningrad to make a huge fuss and send a warning to the West and in particular to Lithuania about dreadful consequences. We will never know what Patrushev had in mind if the EU does, as reported, back away from confrontation. But you can bet Putin would have considered some form of direct action against Lithuania. That would then have placed Nato's North Atlantic Council in an invidious position, forced to contemplate the one thing the alliance has been trying its best to avoid, a war with Russia. So, a sensible climbdown maybe, but anything that makes Putin smile with satisfaction is seriously bad for all of us.