Free Republic

MOSCOW, January 17. /TASS/. Present-day events in the Baltic countries, including the ongoing deportation of Russians from Latvia, affect Russia’s security, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a meeting with heads of Russian municipalities. "The events that are taking place in Latvia and other Baltic countries now, when the Russian people are being thrown out, are very serious and directly affect the security of our country," he said. The Latvian authorities have sent repeated letters threatening to deport 985 Russians who failed to meet the requirement to obtain a residence permit in the country, the LTV TV channel reported with...

The common defence line agreement was signed to block Russian aggression in the region. The Baltic States have signed an agreement to create a common defence line to reinforce NATO's eastern border with both Russia and Belarus. Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia were once all part of the Soviet Union but are now part of the EU and NATO and are allies of Ukraine, where Russia launched a full-scale invasion in in February 2022. The countries' defence ministers signed the document in Latvia's capital Riga. The three believe constructing "anti-mobility defensive installations" will significantly strengthen their borders, as well as deter...

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin warned Congress on Tuesday during a private briefing that if they do not pass more aid to Ukraine, it would “very likely” lead to U.S. troops fighting a war in Europe.

What is the US aircraft carrier doing in Israel? It will start to carry out serious massacres there by striking, destroying Gaza"...The comments of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan... A plane carrying ammunition from the United States arrived in Israel tonight... Tonight rocket fire aimed at Israel from Syria... Meanwhile the Russian military in Syria says that there were only three US coalition air space violations in Syria's Al-Tanf today... The United States determining that the new military government in Niger since July is the result of a military coup. This means a permanent cutoff of 200 million dollars... Tensions...

In a move of staggering stupidity and hubris, Lithuanian banned the transit of Russian goods to Kaliningrad effective today, June 18, 2022. Kaliningrad, which is wedged between Poland on the west and Lithuania on the east, is home to almost a half-million Russians and the headquarters for the Russian Navy’s Baltic Sea force. Lithuania claims it is simply abiding by the sanctions imposed by the European Union. After all, Lithuania is a member of the European Union and NATO. But that is the point. This is a deliberate provocation. It is laying economic siege to a vital interest of Russia....

Japan’s prime minister says his country has entered into a pact with Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania to boost economic and political ties with the three former Soviet republics. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Latvian Prime Minister Maris Kucinskis said after meeting on Saturday that information technology, transportation and medicine are areas where Japan sees the most potential in the Baltic countries. …

RUSSIAN state TV has aired a discussion on seizing the Baltic states as Nato bolster Eastern European allies with thousands more troops. ....Just such a scenario was outlined on Russian state TV channel Rossiya 1 by Colonel Igor Korotchenko, formerly of the Russian General Staff and air force and currently a reserve officer...

RIGA, Latvia (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday assured Lithuania and Latvia of NATO protection and American support as he made quick visits to two of the three Baltic states that are increasingly on edge as Russia presses ahead with its invasion of Ukraine. Along with Estonia, which Blinken will visit on Tuesday, the former Soviet republics are NATO members, and the Biden administration is aiming to calm any fears they have about their security in the event Russia chooses to expand its military operations. In the Latvian capital of Riga, Blinken said the Baltics have...

Moscow demanded Saturday that authorities in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania take measures to protect Russia's embassies after a Russian diplomat was attacked in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius, the Russian RIA news agency said.,/A>"We are warning Vilnius, Riga and Tallinn that they are responsible for the consequences of the anti-Russian psychosis they have unleashed," the Russian foreign ministry was quoted as saying. "A Russian diplomat in the Lithuanian capital was attacked with the use of physical force, attempts were made to put pressure on the ambassador," it added. Lithuania's national broadcaster reported last week a third secretary of the Russian embassy...

Viewed from Paris, London and Washington, the events unfolding in Ukraine may seem like a new Cold War taking shape in Europe. From the Baltic countries, it looks much worse. To Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians — particularly those old enough to have lived under Soviet control — Russia’s belligerence toward Ukraine has some worried that they could be the next target. The escalating tensions which preceded an attack Thursday brought back memories of mass deportations and oppression. “My grandparents were sent away to Siberia. My father was persecuted by the KGB. Now I live in a free democratic country, but...

Lithuania said Wednesday that it has closed its embassy in Beijing and pulled its last diplomat out of the Chinese capital, a move that came amid a spat over the European Union nation allowing Taiwan to open a representative office in its capital, Vilnius. The Lithuanian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the Baltic country would carry out its diplomatic activities in China, which claims Taiwan as part of its territory and does not give diplomatic recognition to nations that treat the island as a separate state. The ministry said it had recalled Lithuania's charge d'affaires — the deputy...

STUTTGART, Germany — Poland has urged NATO to send reinforcements east over concerns about Russia’s military buildup near Ukraine, which is expected to be the focus of high-level alliance talks in Latvia next week that will include U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. President Andrzej Duda said Thursday at NATO headquarters in Brussels that a beefed up military presence along NATO’s eastern flank is needed given concerns over Russian’s intentions in the region. “This cautiousness and vigilance from NATO, which is responsible for the military security of the allies, is necessary,” Duda told reporters after a meeting with NATO Secretary-General...

Russia is preparing its quadrennial Zapad 2021 military exercises along NATO’s eastern borders. The exercise is focused on potential armed conflicts with Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. This extensive military drill in September will also involve troops from Belarus, one of Russia’s few remaining partners. Zapad 2021 is intended to demonstrate Russia’s military readiness and to simulate a clash with a neighboring state in which Moscow prevails. But with this year's exercises being conducted in the midst of the Russo-Ukrainian war and the social turmoil in Belarus, tensions are increased. Especially notable is the impact on the historic rivalry between...

A recent surge in illegal migration into Lithuania represents a hybrid attack on that country and the region and European Union as a whole, defense minister Kalle Laanet (Reform) says. Laanet said Friday that: "Lithuania is our close ally, and our duty is to support them immediately in this crisis." "We are also ready to send three unmanned aircraft crews to Lithuania from August 1 to improve situational awareness at the border," he added, according to a defense ministry press release. Laanet made the remarks during a phone call with his Lithuanian opposite number Agnė Bilotaitė, while both ministers agreed...

In Ukraine, the Kremlin was wary of sending in the armor in large numbers until it appeared separatist troops in the east neared defeat. ere's What You Need to Remember: The Estonian military planned to buy the missiles before Russia invaded Crimea and eastern Ukraine, but the war certainly frightened Estonia enough into buying more of them—and doing it faster. It was more than eight years ago when a tank force from the Georgian army’s 42nd Mechanized Infantry Battalion fought its way overnight through Tskhinvali, South Ossetia. The tanks were in trouble. They were moving too fast, outrunning their infantry...

Exclusive: US authorities made inquiries even before 2016 election campaign into Trump property dealings in former Soviet Union They wanted to build the Las Vegas of the Baltics. In 2010, a small group of businessmen including a wealthy Russian supporter of Vladimir Putin began working on plans to build a glitzy hotel and entertainment complex with Donald Trump in Riga, the capital of Latvia. {snip} The Latvian talks began without fanfare. David Orowitz, TrumpÂ’s senior vice-president for acquisitions and development, discreetly visited Latvia in September 2010 to explore locations, according to one source. The island of Zakusala, in RigaÂ’s Daugava...

In May 1997, NATO and Russia signed the “Founding Act,” which stated, among other things, that “NATO and Russia do not consider each other as adversaries,” and that “in the current and foreseeable security environment,” NATO would not seek “additional permanent stationing of substantial ground combat forces” inside nations close to Russia. Nothing was discussed about the Founding Act at the U.S.-Poland summit, but permanently deploying U.S. troops — especially a division-sized element — on Polish soil would essentially make the agreement moot. Right now, U.S. and NATO troops are regularly deployed on Polish soil, but only on a rotational...

An Associated Press correction last week and reactions to it show that the question of whether the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany were allies at the dawn of World War II remains a hot-button issue for many Russians and eastern Europeans. The correction was issued to an article about a Holocaust commemoration in the Ukrainian city of Lviv that originally called the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany “former allies.” The AP concluded that the pact reached on Aug. 23, 1939 by the German and Soviet foreign ministers Joachim von Ribbentrop and Vyacheslav Molotov didn’t constitute a formal alliance, thus the...

s Trump won primary after primary in 2016, a rattled John Brennan started claiming to colleagues at the CIA that Estonia’s intelligence agency had alerted him to an intercepted phone call suggesting Putin was pouring money into the Trump campaign. The tip was bogus, but Brennan bit on it with opportunistic relish. Out of Brennan’s alarmist chatter about the bogus tip came an extraordinary leak to the BBC: that Brennan had used it, along with later half-baked tips from British intelligence, as the justification to form a multi-agency spy operation (given the Orwellian designation of an “inter-agency taskforce”) on the...

THREE Russian warships have challenged Nato by entering Latvia's exclusive economic zone in the Baltic Sea, according to armed forces officials in Riga. The corvettes - Liven 551, Serpukhov 603 and Morshansk 824 - were detected only four nautical miles from Latvian territorial waters. It was the latest in a series of moves by Vladimir Putin's naval forces seen as testing the response of the small Baltic state, a NATO and EU member. The move on Sunday was linked today to the arrival in the Baltic Sea of US warship, USS Carney, with cruise missiles on board. The three Russian...