KALININGRAD • Russia's Baltic enclave of Kaliningrad launched a 60-million-dollar aviation hub yesterday in a Kremlin-backed bid to stem its isolation from the Russian mainland and open it up to Western Europe.

Connecting eight European capitals with the far-flung provinces of Russia on a daily basis, the international transit terminal aims to take advantage of the area's position as the westernmost point in Russia, Governor Georgy Boss told journalists at the launch.

"Kaliningrad has a huge advantage in transporting passengers between Europe and Russia... it will help develop cultural and business ties between the two regions," he said.

Part of the German province of Prussia until 1945, Kaliningrad is a 170-km-long strip of land that has been cut off from the Russian mainland since the Baltic state of Lithuania gained independence after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union which set a new paradigm in world politics.

Like a new rail-and-ferry cargo route, the air hub will focus on linking Kaliningrad to Germany, providing regular flights to five German cities. The cargo route from northern Russia to Kaliningrad to northern Germany was launched last year by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Both projects should reduce the enclave's dependence on transit through Lithuania and former Soviet satellite Poland, which now both have frosty relations with Moscow.

The new hub is being financed by KD Avia, a local airline that has seen rapid growth on the back of exemptions from expensive aircraft-import tariffs under the province's "special economic zone" status.

The modern transit facility with a capacity of three million passengers per year will replace an international terminal that was "little more than a cow shed," according to one local ex-pat. Although the airline financed 90 percent of the project itself, it had the "moral support" of the Kremlin, smoothing the project's path, said Sergei Smirnov, deputy director of KD Avia ahead of the launch.

The flights will allow passengers from the Russian provinces to avoid the congestion of Moscow and the benefits of cheap internal flights to the Russian province on the Baltic Sea, requiring a shorter hop on more expensive international routes, he said.