Free Republic

Nine EU states are targeting the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights in a wider bid to deport unwanted migrants. A letter spearheaded by Denmark, which is set to take over the rotating EU presidency from July, is demanding more leeway on deporting people who have committed crimes. Published on Thursday (22 May), the letter was signed by leaders of Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Italy, and Poland. It faults the court for placing rights restrictions on deportations of "criminal foreign nationals". They are also unhappy on how the court interprets the European Convention on Human Rights,...

TALLINN/ANTALYA, Turkey, May 15 (Reuters) - Estonia said on Thursday that Moscow had briefly sent a fighter jet into NATO airspace over the Baltic Sea during an attempt to stop a Russian-bound oil tanker thought to be part of a "shadow fleet" defying Western sanctions on Moscow. Russia, which regards sanctions as a malign attempt to crush its economy, says all its ships have free passage in the Baltic and any attempt to stop them is dangerous. Estonia's navy said the unflagged Jaguar ship, which went onto a UK sanctions list last week, refused to cooperate when asked to stop...

Russia's supply of cheap oil is running out, another major blow for Vladimir Putin as he continues to grapple with a growing economic crisis. Businesses and consumers across the country are reeling under the effects of spiralling inflation and high interest rates. In April, the Central Bank confirmed it would keep the key interest rate at 21% for the foreseeable future, much to the bitter disappointment of the Kremlin and business leaders. Many firms are fighting to stay afloat, as they attempt to pay back bank loans originally secured during more favourable economic times. -snip- Gazprom Neft CEO Alexander Dyukov...

A statue of Feliks Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Soviet secret police, Cheka, was unveiled in front of the headquarters of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) in Moscow on September 11. The statue is a replica of a larger Dzerzhinsky statue, one of the symbols of Soviet repression, which was pulled from its pedestal outside KGB headquarters in August 1991. SVR Director Sergei Naryshkin said at the ceremony for the statue's unveiling that Dzerzhinsky's face on the original and new statues is turned toward Poland and Baltic states "because the threat to Russia from the northwest remains."

Numerous world leaders and royals have gathered in Rome for Pope Francis' funeral. Among the most prominent figures at the Vatican's St Peter's Square on Saturday morning were Prince William, US President Donald Trump and his predecessor Joe Biden, Britain's Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron. Their attendance comes at a fragile time for international diplomacy, with Trump meeting Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky before the service. So among the VIP attendees, who sat next to whom? Trump was in a front-row seat near Francis' coffin, alongside his wife Melania Trump, across the aisle from Macron and...

Estonian authorities detained and boarded a ship in the Baltic Sea that belongs to Russia’s shadow fleet, Prime Minister Kristen Michal said Friday. The vessel, which Michal said did not sail under any nation’s flag but was previously registered to Djibouti according to publicly available records, was detained near Tallinn Bay in an operation involving helicopters. “Early this morning, the Estonian Navy detained a sanctioned vessel with no flag state,” Michal said in a post on social media. “Our authorities are currently on board, inspecting its legal status and safety.” The ship was heading to the port of Ust-Luga, a...

Estonian lawmakers voted Wednesday to ban non-EU residents from voting in local elections, a move aimed at the large number of Russian citizens living in the Baltic state as it warily eyes Moscow. The amendment was proposed in response to security concerns over Russia's war in Ukraine. Estonia has been a steadfast supporter of Kyiv since the invasion in February 2022. In the vote on Wednesday, 93 lawmakers in the 101-seat chamber backed a constitutional amendment to impose the restrictions, a result that was met with applause from MPs. Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal hailed the outcome as "a victory...

The modern history is able to provide many eloquent examples of use of practice of double standards in an international policy. First, it concerns ambiguity of approaches of influential western powers and the leading international organizations as to the estimation of election campaigns, and other democratic processes taking place in the states of the former USSR. Therefore, at elections in the countries where the ruling political regime is pro-Western, the international observers recognize that elections meet the European and international standards. On the contrary if a ruling regime or the winner of election has not pro-Western orientation, observers, as a...

Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia intend to withdraw from the Ottawa Convention banning the use and stockpiling of anti-personnel mines, the defense ministers of the four countries have announced in a joint statement. The ministers said that since signing the treaty, “the security situation in our region has fundamentally deteriorated.” Leaving the 1997 treaty, which has been ratified or acceded to by more than 160 nations but not by Russia, will allow Poland and the three Baltic countries to start stockpiling landmines again. The ministers highlighted the threat posed by Russia since its invasion of Ukraine, describing the situation as...

Russia could be sliding into dictatorship as Germany did soon after World War I, Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves has warned. "There is a mentality of being stabbed in the back that reminds me of the Weimar Republic," Mr Ilves told Russia's Moscow Times newspaper. The Weimar Republic is the name given to the German state in 1919-1933 - before Adolf Hitler's rise to power. Estonia-Russia ties have been tense since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Last year, Tallinn and Moscow had an all-out row over the relocation of a Soviet-era war memorial in the Estonian capital. Amnesty report...

Putin’s Activation of ‘Iskander-M’ Ballistic Missile Is a Message to Obama http://observer.com/2016/10/putins-activation-of-iskander-m-ballistic-missile-is-a-message-to-obama/ Putin’s Activation of ‘Iskander-M’ Ballistic Missile Is a Message to Obama The KGB officer in the Kremlin seeks one last, grand strategic humiliation for our president before he leaves office By John R. Schindler • 10/07/16 11:00am Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with Prince Albert II of Monaco (not pictured) at the Kremlin in Moscow on October 6, 2016. / AFP / POOL AND AFP / YURI KADOBNOV Russian President Vladimir Putin. Yuri Kadobnov/AFP/Getty Images It’s long been obvious that Vladimir Putin and his inner circle view Barack...

The European Parliament President Roberta Metsola has completely sealed the fate of Europe and its desire for self-destruction. She is now claiming that it is Ukraine that is defending Europe against a full-scale invasion by Russia. Ukraine is fighting for the security of Europe. Some people only understand a story if it is explained as a picture. Xxx This is the image that Metsola is promoting to try to inspire Europeans to throw their lives away for these ethnic hatreds that are as unsolvable as the Middle East battle between Suni and Shite. The Neocons have full control of the...

The EU's top diplomat said Thursday that NATO offered the best security guarantee for Ukraine, accusing President Donald Trump of falling for a Russian narrative by closing the door.In an interview with AFP on a visit to Washington, Kaja Kallas also warned that the Europeans would not be able to assist in an eventual ceasefire deal in Ukraine's three-year conflict with Russia unless they are included by Trump, who has reached out directly to Russian President Vladimir Putin.Kallas, a former prime minister of frontline state Estonia, said NATO countries have never attacked Russia which instead was "afraid of democracy."

Last Monday (December 23rd) three explosions rocked the Russian cargo ship "Ursa Major" in the western Mediterranean Sea. The vessel went down with 14 crew members rescued and two missing. The site of what the ship's owners called a "targeted terrorist attack" not too far away from the British outpost of Gibraltar... And then we have the seizure of a Russian affiliated oil tanker off Finland on Christmas Day. The vessel accused of sabotaging an underwater electricity link between Finland and Estonia. There have been other such incidents reported involving other merchant vessels of Hong Kong and Chinese ownership. The...

In many parts of Europe and beyond, the end of the First World War did not mean an end to the fighting. >Russian Civil War 1917-1923 ... >Finnish Civil War 1918 Finland was a Grand Duchy of the Russian Empire when the First World War broke out. The Russian Revolution in 1917 left a power vacuum in Finland and a struggle ensued between the conservative Whites who wanted independence from Soviet Russia and the socialist Reds who opposed the separation. >German Revolution 1918-1919 ... >Estonian-Soviet 1918-1920 Estonia was part of the Russian Empire when the First World War began. It...

As Russian tanks rumble through Georgia, and Western pundits talk of the "new Cold War," one trope keeps reappearing in their discourse. Russia's newly aggressive stance, we are told, is partly our fault: After the fall of Communism, the West went out of its way to humiliate and trample Russia instead of treating it as a partner--and now, an oil-powered Russia is striking back. "Russia's litany of indignities dates to the early 1990s when the Soviet empire collapsed," Samantha Power, a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and former Barack Obama adviser, wrote in Time. "A bipolar universe gave...

🇨🇦 Canada 🇪🇸 Spain 🇸🇪 Sweden 🇫🇮 Finland 🇳🇴 Norway 🇩🇰 Denmark 🇮🇸 Iceland 🇪🇪 Estonia 🇱🇻 Latvia 🇱🇹 Lithuania Several more are still expected

Lithuania and Estonia have responded to “good and constructive pressure” from US President Donald Trump to become the first Nato countries to promise to spend more than 5 per cent of their GDP on defence in a drive to sharply increase military capabilities. Kęstutis Budrys, Lithuania’s foreign minister, told the Financial Times that Europe was facing a “new era” after the Baltic state, which is next to Russia, said it would spend between 5 per cent and 6 per cent of its GDP on defence from next year until at least 2030. That is about double the current level. “Of...

Russian TV host Vladimir Solovyov, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, recently called for Alaska's return to Russia during a recent Russian-state media program. -snip- During the recent program, Solovyov said Finland, Warsaw, the Baltics, Moldova, and Alaska should be "returned to the Russian Empire." "Do you think I'm joking when I mention Finland, Warsaw, the Baltics, Moldova? Everything returned to the Russian Empire. And Alaska too, while you're at it," Solovyov said in a translated video.

The country’s prime minister said the incident, the latest in a series of disruptions to undersea infrastructure, underscored the danger of a so-called Russian shadow fleet.The Finnish police on Thursday boarded an oil tanker that the authorities said they suspected was involved in damaging vital undersea cables. They suggested the tanker was part of a shadow fleet used by Russia to avoid Western sanctions.The Estlink 2 submarine cable, which carries electricity between Finland and Estonia, was cut on Wednesday, Finland’s police said in a statement, the latest in a slew of disruptions to undersea infrastructure that are being investigated as...