Chernyakhovsk (Russian: Черняхо́вск), known prior to 1946 by its German name of Insterburg[6] (audioⓘ; Lithuanian: Įsrutis; Polish: Wystruć), is a town in Kaliningrad Oblast, Russia, and the administrative center of Chernyakhovsky District.

In 1454, Polish King Casimir IV Jagiellon incorporated the region to the Kingdom of Poland upon the request of the anti-Teutonic Prussian Confederation.

Michael Andreas Barclay de Tolly died at Insterburg in 1818 on his way from his Livonian manor to Germany, where he wanted to renew his health.

[11] In 1863, a Polish secret organization was founded and operated in Insterburg, which was involved in arms trafficking to the Russian Partition of Poland during the January Uprising.

The Weimar Germany era after World War I saw the town separated from the rest of the country as the province of East Prussia had become an exclave.

During World War II, the Germans operated a Dulag Luft transit prisoner-of-war camp for Allied POWs in the town.

In September 2019 the local court ruled[21] that the coat of arms was illegal because it carries "elements of foreign culture."

The case brought before the court follows a trend among several towns in the region that have announced their intentions to change their coat of arms as tensions mount between Russia and the West following the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation in 2014 and its support for pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.