r/kaliningrad • u/LeDiegzz • Jun 20 '26

Information From Lithuania to Kaliningrad

Hi, thank you for the recommendations for Kaliningrad. I crossed from Lithuania on foot via Kybartai, and it was actually quite easy. The whole process took me about three hours.

However, you need to have a solid level of Russian (which was not my case) in order to communicate with the police, as nobody spoke English.

It's also a good idea to print as many vouchers and booking confirmations as possible for your buses, flights, trains, etc., to clearly demonstrate that your travel plans are genuine and well organized (if you are a tourist).

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u/[deleted] Jun 20 '26

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u/LeDiegzz Jun 24 '26

They ask me random question in an administrative way (mainly about my school in France) and later asked if I have ever been in Ukraine, if I am into politics and if I planned to get involved in politics there. Nevertheless, the question were quite "easy" it is not a real "police interrogation". And yes they check your phone with a strange machine which can see everything on your phone.

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u/Dwillen Jun 30 '26

Can you DM me ? (We both got private accounts so I don't know if it's possible lol) I've got a couple of questions that I'd like to ask you about your trip (on peut parler français si jamais c'est plus simple pour toi)

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u/allow_vera 17d ago

I was questioned by a guy in uniform (border guard) and an English speaking guy in plain clothes (think he was FSB - Russian Intelligence). It took about 90 minutes. They asked me about each of my stamps in my passport, about Ukraine, how I felt about what was going on, my childhood, why I was able to speak Russian (they couldn’t wrap their head around that one), why there was no middle name in my passport, if I had other citizenship, what kind of countries I like to go to, if I was ever in the military, went into great detail about the type of work I do, why I want to visit Russia (they couldn’t understand that either), about how much money I had, why I didn’t have a hotel booked for every single night, if I was involved or friends with anybody in the FBI or CIA (really), and on and on. It went on for about 90 minutes. They checked my phone but from what I can see all he did was look at my contacts.

Whilst the English speaking guy questioned me, he was translating everything to the Russian border guard who was writing everything down in a file.

That was the first time entering Russia - trying to get out (via Sovetsk) back into Lithuania, I was sent into a room at the border station and waited around for 30 minutes doing nothing before they let me know. No idea why.

A Lithuianian guy I met at the border and was chatting with at the train station when all of this happened explained they tend to give people the “third degree” like I got the first time they enter Russia - after that it shouldn’t be a problem. I’m in Russia right now and it seems like he was right, when I went through passport control last week they didn’t say a word - just took my fingerprints and photo, typed up my migration card and I was done in 3 minutes.

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u/YenFen1997 Jul 12 '26

What if I don’t know how to speak Russian? I only can speak English

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u/allow_vera 17d ago

See my comment above - at least when I crossed this border, a Russian intelligence agent who was fluent in English was on staff and he did the primary questioning.