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The European Green Party on Friday called for Jill Stein, the 2024 presidential candidate of the U.S. Green Party, to withdraw from the race...writing that the election is “too close for comfort.” “On 5 November 2024, the world will be watching to see whether Americans choose Kamala Harris or Donald Trump to be their next president,” the European party, also known as the European Greens, wrote. “Ahead of these pivotal elections, European Greens have called upon US Green Party candidate Jill Stein to withdraw her Presidential candidacy, and endorse Kamala Harris.” Harris is the only candidate who can block former...

Green politicians from across Europe on Friday called on U.S. Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein to withdraw from the race for the White House and endorse Democrat Kamala Harris instead.“We are clear that Kamala Harris is the only candidate who can block Donald Trump and his anti-democratic, authoritarian policies from the White House,” Green parties from countries including Germany, France, Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Ireland, Estonia, Belgium, Spain, Poland and Ukraine said in a statement, which was shared with POLITICO ahead of publication.

The president of Estonia goes on national TV to urge his countrymen to have more children. Russian President Vladimir Putin warns his parliament about "a serious crisis threatening Russia's survival": the nation's low birth rate. The government of Singapore is trying to reverse that country's birth dearth by sponsoring a massive taxpayer-funded matchmaking service. In 1968, Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb, panicking the world with dire predictions of a population explosion. By the year 2000, he predicted, the world would be so crowded that hundreds of millions would die of starvation. Although Mr. Ehrlich's prophecies have turned out to...

Could Finland´s next President be a foreigner? Finland´s current President Alexander Stubb speaking to the public. Finland´s President Alexander Stubb Credit: Alexander Stubb, Facebook Finland´s future President may be a foreigner, said current President Alexander Stubb during a recent presidential Q&A session on the local Yle Radio Suomi. The Finnish President emphasised that 10 per cent of residents in Finland have foreign backgrounds and argued that the future could see a foreign national leading the country. “Racism should not be politicised. Every nation has to go through this discussion,” emphasised Stubb. “In Finland, 10 per cent of people were not...

Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia have issued a chilling warning: they're prepared to send troops into Ukraine without NATO approval. Fearing Russia's growing aggression, these Baltic nations see themselves as next in line. With historical ties to the Soviet Union and recent Russian threats, they're taking matters into their own hands. Will NATO step in? Or will the Baltics become the first domino to fall?

Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas is tipped to become the European Union's next foreign policy boss, but her tough stance on Russia may raise doubts as to whether she can represent views from across the bloc. EU leaders' informal talks on Monday, their first since the European Parliament election, focus on the appointments for the bloc's top jobs, with European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen expected to secure a second term and EU diplomats saying Kallas is in line for the foreign affairs role. Kallas, who turns 47 on Tuesday, has made her name as an eloquent critic of...

With a shortage of mortar shells in reserves across Europe, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are setting up their own ammunition factories to be ready in case of a potential attack from Russia. In Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia — three Baltic states on the edge of the European Union that all share a border with Russia — defense is a key concern. All the more so, since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale attack on Ukraine in February 2022. According to NATO statistics, the defense spending of the three states greatly exceeded the minimum 2% of GDP in 2023, and...

The removal of the navigation buoys is part of a 'broader pattern of provocative behaviour' by the Kremlin, the EU's chief diplomat says. The EU's foreign affairs chief, Josep Borrell, has asked Moscow for an "explanation" after buoys on the Narva River demarcating Estonia's border with Russia were removed in the early hours of Thursday. According to Estonian border guards, their Russian counterparts confiscated 24 of 50 buoys intended to mark sailing routes on the border waterway, an act which Borrell described as "unacceptable." "This border incident is part of a broader pattern of provocative behaviour and hybrid actions by...

<p>Baltic leaders reacted warily on Wednesday to reports that Russia could revise the borders of its territorial waters in the region.</p><p>In a draft proposal reported by some Russian media, Russia's Defence Ministry suggests updating the coordinates used to measure the strip of territorial waters off of its mainland coast and that of its islands in the Baltic Sea.</p>

Russia’s Defense Ministry has unilaterally moved to revise the borders of Russian territorial waters in the Baltic Sea, drafting a government decree on the expansion without even bothering to notify NATO members Finland and Lithuania. In reaction to the surprised responses of the Baltic Sea states, the Kremlin on Wednesday issued a statement that seems bound only to make matters worse. Insisting that there’s “nothing political” about the proposed border change, Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in the same breath that the “political situation” has in fact “changed significantly” since the borders were drawn. “You see how tensions are...

Estonia has been "seriously" discussing sending troops to Ukraine in roles positioned away from the front lines, per a national security official. Madis Roll, national security advisor to Estonia's president, told military news outlet Breaking Defense that his country's leaders were assessing the viability of sending Estonian soldiers to "rear" roles that wouldn't see direct combat in Ukraine. Such a move would help relieve Ukraine's manpower crunch and allow it to send more soldiers to the front lines. And while Estonia, a North Atlantic Treaty Organization country, prefers to act together with the alliance's major members, it's also not closed...

EU member Estonia feels threatened by neighbour Russia. This year, the small NATO country will invest over 3% of its GDP to beef up its defence capabilities. It has also been hosting NATO exercises and training civilians in trench warfare, as EuronewsWitness reporter Hans von der Brelie discovered. Indrek Jurtšenko is a trained opera singer. But today he takes me to a military manoeuvre in the Estonian forests. Armed civilians, part of the “Estonian Defence League” (EDL), are war-gaming together with professional soldiers: “In our exercise there are 500 people from Estonia, Lithuania and France participating”, he says. The drill...

A senior Ukrainian intelligence official warned about the threat Moscow poses on other nations in Europe, saying "the Russians will take the Baltics in seven days" if allies don't stand up to Russia now. The comment was made by Major-General Vadym Skibitsky, the deputy head of Ukraine's military intelligence directorate (GUR), during an interview with The Economist published on Thursday. The alarm has been sounded before about the potential of Russian President Vladimir Putin looking to start conflicts in the Baltic states. Earlier this year, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) wrote that the Russian leader appeared to...

Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia are building massive new fortifications along their borders with both Russia and Belarus in order to create a common defense line against possible future invasions by Moscow or its allies in Minsk. The Baltic Defense Line as the project has come to be known was an important piece of a new agreement struck between the three nations aimed at reinforcing NATO’s borders with Russia, and the defense will only get tougher. Latvian Defense Minister Andris Sprūds noted in a statement about the new agreement that he and the defense ministers of Estonia and Lithuania approved the...

Nato must be ready for Russia launching an “existential” war against the Baltic states “masked by a blizzard of disinformation”, ambassadors from the three countries have warned. Writing exclusively for The Sunday Telegraph, the top diplomats to the UK from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania said that Russia could “pivot quickly” from Ukraine to invade the Baltic. And they said that Vladimir Putin’s brutalisation of Ukraine is evoking the three countries’ “darkest memories” of occupation under Stalin. The Estonian ambassador Viljar Lubi, the Latvian ambassador Ivita Burmistre, and Lithuania’s charge d’affaire Lina Zigmantaite, wrote the joint article to mark Friday’s 20...

Soviet spy Helene (“Leen”) Kullman was shot by the Germans on this date in 1943 … or was she? Kullman (English Wikipedia entry | the much more detailed Estonian) was just out of teaching school when the Germans occupied Estonia. She joined the Red Army and was eventually trained as an intelligence agent, infiltrated by parachute behind German lines in September 1942, and arrested by the Gestapo in January 1943. This is where things get interesting. According to the Soviet hagiography that resulted in her decoration as a Hero of the Soviet Union in 1965, Kullman defied her torturers and...

MOSCOW/VILNIUS, Feb 13 (Reuters) - Russian police have put Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, Lithuania's culture minister, and members of the previous Latvian parliament on a wanted list for destroying Soviet-era monuments, according to the Russian interior ministry's database. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Kallas was wanted for the "desecration of historical memory". Russian state agency TASS said the Baltic officials were accused of "destroying monuments to Soviet soldiers", acts that are punishable by a five-year prison term under the Russian criminal code. *snip* The Baltic governments regard the monuments as propaganda tools constructed by their former imperial overlords. "The...

Estonia’s domestic security agency said on Tuesday that it had apprehended 10 people suspected of sabotage and of spreading fear and creating tension within the Baltic country in a coordinated "hybrid operation" by Russia’s special services. Among the suspects — detained between December and February — are individuals believed to have broken the car windows of Interior Minister Lauri Läänemets and a local journalist in December, the Estonian Internal Security Service said. "The information currently collected in criminal proceedings indicate that the Russian special service had coordinated a hybrid operation against the security of the Republic of Estonia, involving the...

Russian forces are likely planning to double their forces on borders with members of the Western security alliance NATO, the Estonian Foreign Intelligence Service said in a new report. The report says that Russia is planning to create a new corps, which can include up to 45,000 troops, at NATO’s borders in northern Europe. As of 2022, Russia had about 19,000 troops at the northern border. The 44th Army Corps would likely be based in the northwestern Russian city of Petrozavodsk near the border with Finland, according to the report. The Estonian intelligence assessment said the new Russian unit would...

Why would Russia want to attack the West? What purpose could it serve? The only explanation is comic book evil. That is the logic of the entire American Empire: everything is a comic book. If they even art doing a troop buildup – and they’re not – they would be doing it defensively because NATO is constantly issuing all these threats. The head of NATO recently announced he is planning a decades-long war with Russia.