[10] Baltiysk, the westernmost town in Russia, is a major base of the Russian Navy's Baltic Fleet and is connected to St. Petersburg by ferry.

During the Thirty Years' War, the harbor was occupied by Sweden in the aftermath of their victory over the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, and King Gustavus Adolphus landed there with his reinforcements in May 1626.

[12] After the Truce of Altmark in 1629, the Swedes retained Pillau and set out upgrading its fortifications, constructing a star fort which remains one of the town's landmarks.

Russian forces occupied the town during the Seven Years' War and built a small Orthodox church there, with the event commemorated by the equestrian statue of Empress Elizabeth, unveiled in 2004.

Constructed at a huge cost of thirteen million marks, the canal allowed vessels of a 21 feet (6.4 m) draught to moor alongside the city or to sail directly to Königsberg without stopping at Pillau, causing a serious decline to the town's economy.

As the Red Army entered East Prussia, more than 450,000 refugees were ferried from Pillau to central and western Germany, with the town eventually being captured by Soviets on 25 April 1945.

After the war, Pillau was included in the northern part of East Prussia passed to the Soviet Union that became Kaliningrad Oblast, and the German inhabitants were expelled in accordance with the Potsdam Agreement.

[citation needed] In 2019, on a wave of anti-Western sentiment following Russia's annexation of Crimea, there were calls to change the town's German-era coat of arms, which features a sturgeon wearing the crown of King Frederick William I of Prussia.

A stone cross, erected in 1830 to commemorate the supposed spot of St. Adalbert of Prague's martyrdom, was destroyed by the Soviets and restored a millennium after the event, in 1997.