A poll conducted by the Baltic Federal University finds htat only 41.4 percent of residents of Kaliningrad identify themselves as “residents of Russia.” The remainder consider themselves to be residents of the region or the city or even “residents of Europe” or “citizens of the world” as native son Immanuel Kant would have them be.

The reason for that, regionalist Oleg Savvin argues, is that Vladimir Putin has destroyed federalism in Russia and is pursuing an anti-European policy at odds with the interests and needs of the people of the exclave who are surrounded by European countries and want to live as well as people do in them (rufabula.com/articles/2015/10/27/the-right-to-nullification).

“Current Russian realities,” he writes, “are a hybrid surrogate of Soviet reality which has absorbed and accumulated into itself the most offensive parts.” Indeed, “the very name ‘Russian Federation’ has already been a phantom for a long time” because “there has not been any real federalism in the country” under Putin.

http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2015/10/fewer-than-half-of-kaliningraders-now.html?spref=tw