Artamonov, appearing on the ‘News.by’ air on November 14, 2024, while criticizing NATO's troop buildup in the region, discussed Russia's plans regarding the Suwalki Gap.
“For some reason, it's being said — and I don't know why — that Russia is allegedly going to break through the Suwalki Gap to Belarus. I repeat, this is the path of Nazis. Russia has never in its life stated that this Gap is somehow necessary to it, that it is generally going to engage in such illegal actions,” Artamonov claimed.
The Suwalki Gap is a Polish territory that links the Baltic states to the rest of the EU and provides the shortest route from Belarus to the Kaliningrad Region. This makes the area strategically important to Russia.
The WTF team found evidence of Russian threats to seize the Gap. For example, Dmitry Rogozin, former head of Roscosmos and now a senator from the occupied Zaporizhzhia Region of Ukraine, stated on his Telegram channel in January 2024 that “it's time to cut a corridor to the Kaliningrad Oblast.” This post followed news about the closure of Russian schools in Lithuania.
In July 2023, following the June Wagner Group mutiny and Yevgeny Prigozhin's decision to relocate his mercenaries to Belarus, Andrey Kartapolov, head of the Russian State Duma's Defense Committee, said:
“It's clear that the Wagnerites went to Belarus to train the Belarusian armed forces. But that's not all. There's something more to it. There's the Suwalki Gap. Everyone knows about it. And this Suwalki Gap is very important to us, if necessary. <...> A powerful force is ready to take this unfortunate corridor in hours. And here again, we were ahead of them.”