Polish General: Warsaw Should Lay Claim to Russia's Kaliningrad Region Over Its Historical Ties

Skshipchak told Polish outlet Super Express that Kaliningrad "has been occupied by Russia since 1945."

The general said that Warsaw "has the right to claim this territory, which Russia occupies," and added that the region "has no military significance."

The Kaliningrad region is located in northern Europe, bordering Poland to the south, Lithuania in the north and east and boasting a long set of beaches on the Baltic Sea to the west, thus making it a semi-exclave of Russia, since it does not have a common land border with the Russian Federation.

Kaliningrad is often known by its historic name, Konigsberg, and was the capital of East Prussia from 1773 until 1945. Until World War II, it was Germany's easternmost large city. In 1944, Allied bombardment severely devastated the city, which was afterwards seized by the Soviet Union during the Battle of Konigsberg in 1945.

The Potsdam Agreement of 1945 placed it under provisional Soviet control, and it was annexed. In 1946, it was renamed Kaliningrad after Soviet official Mikhail Kalinin.

Poland and Prussia have fought over territories and zones of influence throughout the Middle Ages. However, from the middle 15th century until the middle of the 17th, Prussia was in vassal dependence on the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, which was then living its golden age. By the end of the 18th century, as a result of the so-called Prussian partition, the kingdom acquired some of the former Polish lands.

After the World War II, East Prussia was divided between the Soviet Union and the Polish People's Republic, which was part of the Warsaw bloc, and while Konigsberg and its surrounding area went to the Soviet Union and became Kaliningrad, Poland received the southern part, now bearing the name Warmian-Masurian Voivodeship within the modern-day republic.