Russia has approved scheduled flights by Serbian airlines to Kaliningrad, the Russian transport ministry announced. The arrangement is part of the aviation agreement between the two countries and provides for designated Serbian carriers to operate scheduled services to that region.

When the flights start and which company will operate them - not stated. That is what is missing from the announcement, and it is everything the announcement should have contained.

Kaliningrad is not an ordinary destination. It is a Russian enclave on the Baltic, physically cut off from mainland Russia, wedged between Lithuania and Poland - two NATO members. Since 2022 the region has been one of the tensest points in Europe's north: disputes over transit through Lithuania, heightened military activity in the surrounding airspace, regular incidents.

The last air link

Serbia is one of the few European countries that kept a direct scheduled air link with Russia after the 2022 sanctions. Once the European Union closed its airspace to Russian carriers and Russia responded in kind, Air Serbia kept flying between Belgrade and Russian cities. The result: Belgrade became a direct air corridor between Russia and Europe - outside the Union's jurisdiction.

Today there is not a single EU airline flying to, from or over Russian territory. The European Union Aviation Safety Agency still advises against flying in certain zones of western Russian airspace.

So Serbia is opening a new route to exactly that part of the map - and in a week when Belgrade was already in the headlines over the funeral of Ratko Mladić. A country formally heading for Union membership, and in practice building an air bridge to an enclave stuck between two NATO members.

The question for Brussels is whether this is treated as a commercial matter or as a political message. Experience so far says decisions like this get commented on quietly, written into a report, and put back on the table at the point when it is already too late to change them.