Politics of Kaliningrad Oblast
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The current Governor of Kaliningrad Oblast is Alexey Besprozvannykh, who succeeded Yevgeny Zinichev in 2016. The latest elections to the region's legislative body, the 40-seat Kaliningrad Oblast Duma, were held in September 2021.
The EU and Russia have had a serious political debate over the oblast territory. The enlargement of the EU in 2004, through which Poland and Lithuania became member states, meant that the oblast now has land borders only with the EU. Issues of security have been at the forefront of debate, with high relevance to the Schengen Agreement.
Regionalism
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, some intellectuals and government officials in the oblast openly discussed the region separating from Russia. In the mid-1990s, Yuri Matochkin, the oblast's first post-Soviet governor, demanded a special relationship with the EU and threatened a referendum on secession, abetting fears in Moscow about the centrifugal forces of separatism. His attempts at elevating the oblast's status to that of a sovereign republic associated with the Russian Federation yielded no results. Around the same time, the secessionist Baltic Republican Party, banned in 2005, aimed at establishing the oblast as the "fourth Baltic state". However, an organized secessionist movement has never emerged there and surveys indicate strong support for remaining a part of Russia.
Social unrest in 2009-2010
From October 2009 to January 2010 several demonstrations took place in the oblast, initially against a significant increase with retroactive application of the tax on vehicles imported from the European Union, thus threatening local business.
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