ABSTRACT
The Kaliningrad region (the Oblast) arises as a space caught between some rather profound questions pertaining to the role, power and influence of marginal actors in the relations between the EU and Russia. It does so by standing out as an entity that blurs clear-cut borders and the division into political space in terms of ‘us’ versus ‘them’. The Oblast stands out in forming a potentially emergent ‘third space’ as a problematic case for both of the actors, although it does not do so in a uniform manner. Moreover, significant changes have taken place over time with the initial progress in sorting out Kaliningrad as an overlapping and deviant space being more recently traded ‒ with hard security increasing in constitutive impact ‒ for more standard approaches basically turning Kaliningrad into an object of the policies pursued by Russia and NATO ‒ thereby also drastically reducing the subjectivity of the Oblast itself.
