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The Baltic States earn a lot on transit of goods and raw materials from the East to the West, but Moscow intends to deprive them of their income, moving its transit to its own ports. Moscow uses a combination of military and economic means against the Baltic states that may be workable. The American Ministry of Finance within the so-called Global Magnitsky act introduced in December included a black list of people, blocking their assets in the United States. That list include several high-ranking foreign officials and politicians suspected of involvement in large scale corruption. Magnitsky was a lawyer and...

What Six Years of ‘Reset’ with Russia Have Wrought by CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER August 27, 2015 On September 5, 2014, Russian agents crossed into Estonia and kidnapped an Estonian security official. Last week, after a closed trial, Russia sentenced him to 15 years. The reaction? The State Department issued a statement. The NATO secretary-general issued a tweet. Neither did anything. The European Union (reports the Wall Street Journal) said it was too early to discuss any possible action. The timing of this brazen violation of NATO territory — two days after President Obama visited Estonia to symbolize America’s commitment to its...

A U.S. Patriot missile battery has arrived in Poland as part of an agreement to upgrade the NATO ally's air defenses, the U.S. embassy said on Monday, in a deployment likely to irritate neighboring Russia.The battery, manned by up to 150 U.S. troops, will be stationed for about one month four times a year in Morag, northern Poland, close to Russia's exclave of Kaliningrad. Its main mission is to train Polish military personnel. U.S. troops were unloading 37 railway cars of equipment on Monday, the embassy said. U.S. and Polish officials are due to visit the site on Wednesday and...

Population levels across many parts of the developed world are declining, but this is particularly noticeable in former Eastern Bloc states where the number of children being born has plummeted within a generation.

Under the agreement on the location of U.S. military facilities in Romania, the United States can launch an attack from Romanian territory without knowledge or approval of the Romanian authorities. Parliament's joint defense and foreign policy committees discussed the accord yesterday with representatives of the Ministry of Defense and Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The agreement, signed last year by Foreign Minister Mihai Razvan Ungureanu and visiting U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on December 6 last year, allows U.S. troops access to four Romanian military bases. Mihai Kogalniceanu in Constanta will be the most important U.S. military base, as it...

Russian Orthodox TV expands into CIS, Europe 19:48 | 08/ 02/ 2006 MOSCOW, February 8 (RIA Novosti) - Russia's first Orthodox television network began satellite broadcasts to other former Soviet republics and to Western Europe on Wednesday. Spas (or Savior), which has been broadcasting to Russia's European part since its launch last July, will now be able to increase its audience to 20-40 million from the current 3.5 mln, officials responsible for the channel's regional development said. The privately-owned broadcaster has so far been on air for 12 hours per day, but plans eventually to shift to a round-the-clock schedule....

Almost six out of 10 Romanians believe Romania’s European Union accession in 2007 will bring more constraints than advantages in the short term, according to the results of a survey conducted by the IRSOP agency. The opinion poll on how Romanians view the EU comes just one month before the crucial EU report due on October 25, by which the Union will judge Romania next spring. Around 56 percent of those questioned in the poll commissioned by the European Commission delegation in Bucharest, said joining the EU will bring more disadvantages than advantages in the short term, but 68 percent...

In a classification of EU members and hopefuls by the minimum wage paid per economy in January 2005, Romania stands at the end of the list with 72 euros, after Bulgaria, which reported 77 euros – reads a recent study of the EU institute for statistics Eurostat. Covering the month of January 2003, 2004 and 2005, the report places Romania last in 2004 too, with 69 euros, after it had been last but one in 2003, with 73 euros (ahead of Bulgaria, with 51 euros). In January 2005, Hungary paid a minimum wage of 232 euros whereas Poland paid 205...

The opposition Democratic Party of Albania (DPA) and its smaller allies are preparing to return to government following Albania's parliamentary election on July 3rd, although complaints by the losers are delaying the handover of power. The result is a triumph for Sali Berisha, the DPA leader, who had pledged to retire from politics if he suffered a third straight general election defeat at the hands of the ruling Socialist Party of Albania (SPA). Mr Berisha’s previous period in office in the 1990s was marked by autocratic rule and financial collapse, and the outside world is wary at the prospect of...

SOFIA (Reuters) - Bulgaria's opposition Socialists were ahead of the ruling centrists of the ex-king prime minister in Saturday's elections but may not have won enough votes to easily form a government, exit polls showed. A Gallup poll for Bulgaria's BTV television gave the ex-communists 32.2 percent of the vote versus 20.5 percent for Simeon Saxe-Coburg's ruling National Movement for Simeon II (NMS). Three other local polling agencies put the Socialists at 30.7-32.1 percent and the NMS at 19.5-21.1 percent. If the polls are confirmed by official results, the Socialists could have difficulty forming a majority coalition government to press...

BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) - Romania's defense minister has removed a top general from a key post for telling reporters that the United States would set up military bases near the Black Sea, the Defense Ministry said Saturday. Brigade Gen. Valeriu Nicut lost his job as head of the military's strategic planning department after saying at an international conference in Bucharest on Wednesday that the U.S. would take over the Kogalniceanu air base near Constanta and have access to a nearby port. Romania, an ally that has joined the U.S. in Iraq, has been in talks with Washington over hosting U.S....

Pentagon plans to move U.S. troops out of Germany and station them in smaller bases in Eastern Europe reflect America's evolving military priorities, conservative lawmakers said Tuesday. But it should not come as a surprise that many see the proposals as an attempt to punish Germany for its opposition to the U.S.-led war in Iraq, they said. U.S. bases need to be realigned because there is no longer a threat of a land invasion from the former Soviet Union, said Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee. However, plans to move installations from Germany...

BUDAPEST, Hungary. "It was terrible living under a dictatorship," she said in her office, decorated with an aerial photo of the World Trade Center rubble. "We've earned the right to no longer be told what to say or do." Small but spirited, Hungary and a dozen other democracies emerging behind the former Iron Curtain have found a bold new voice in the squabble over how to disarm Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. Despite their economic, political and military weaknesses, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia and other nations responded by pulling together and repeating their gratitude...

Robin Gedye, Foreign Affairs Writer, tours the nations of 'new' Europe and finds them united against the 'old' President Jacques Chirac's tirade against eastern Europe's fledgling democracies was the best news residents of the Polish village of Bidla Podlaska have had since the last Soviet tank rolled out of the nearby base nearly 10 years ago. Hard against Poland's eastern border with Russia, about 100 miles out of Warsaw on Route 80, Bidla Podlaska is tipped to become the new American military headquarters in Europe if American forces relocate from the increasingly hostile German environment. Equipped with a barracks for...

Amid continued calls by many United Nations members for a peaceful solution to the Iraq crisis, several former communist states have reiterated support for the U.S. position on disarming Iraq. Ambassadors from Macedonia, Albania, Latvia, and Uzbekistan, among others, have urged the UN Security Council to consider stronger measures to ensure Iraqi compliance with its disarmament obligations. United Nations, 20 February 2003 (RFE/RL) -- A two-day debate on Iraq has concluded with more calls for the United Nations Security Council to avoid a military solution to the crisis but also with warnings for Baghdad to comply quickly with its disarmament...

The Prime Ministers of four East European countries expected to join the European Union in 2004 say they will insist on higher agricultural subsidies than the Union is offering. The issue could delay the planned EU expansion. The leaders, from Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic, released a statement on the issue during a meeting in Budapest. Following weekend talks, the four Prime Ministers of the countries known as the Visegrad Group said they oppose EU plans to give them, initially, a quarter of the agricultural subsidies current members receive. Under the EU plan, the 10 countries that are...

Washington Times April 15, 2002 Pg. 16 Romania, Bulgaria Unsure Bets By David R. Sands, The Washington Times PREDEAL, Romania — The promise and peril of NATO's "southern dimension" strategy are on display as Romania's elite alpine military unit goes through its paces on the sheer face of a snowy mountain an hour's drive north of Bucharest. The unit's commanders explain in fluent English to a visiting American delegation as the troops claw their way up the near-vertical peak, rappel down nimbly, or seem to emerge from invisible crevices to disable an enemy convoy in a mock ambush. At the...