Crimea

Tatars of Crimea are "the new enslaved people in today's Europe", says Lithuanian statesman Vytautas Landsbergis.

The Lithuanian government agreed on priority issues the country will raise during its term at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Executive Council. These will include the safety of reporters and the rights of the Crimean Tatar community, according to approv...

Numerous clever tricks and a slew of political parties loyal to Russia’s government now ensure the “right” election result long before any votes are cast. And this means that the election count can be shown to be fair, and at the same time managed by individuals who are widely trusted and respected.

NATO will not renounce additional security measures in Eastern Europe in exchange for Russia's potential assistance in fighting terrorism, a top NATO official said in Vilnius on Thursday.

Six foreign ministers of the Baltic and Nordic states call on Europe not to let down pressure on Russia over the annexation of Crimea. What follows is their message:

The European Union will extend sanctions against Russian and Ukrainian individuals over the conflict in Ukraine until September, EU sources said on Wednesday.

NATO-Russian relations are where they are, at historic lows, because of what Moscow does, not because of how Western nations react to it, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkevičius argues in an op-ed piece for Politico. Russia needs to prove it deserves to be spoken to, while holding meetings for...

US President Barack Obama has announced that the US will extend its sanctions against Russia for another year. The sanctions were initially implemented in March of 2014 response to the annexation of Crimea and the destabilisation of Ukraine.

Concepts of military strategy and doctrine have long influenced the political and military geography of the Baltic region.

Across Europe all eyes have been on Poland's conservative Law and Justice Party since they dramatically swept back into power. After securing a majority in the Polish parliament, the party swiftly put their power to use, launching controversial reforms of the country’s Constitutional Court and incre...

One cannot choose one's neighbours. We have been assigned ours by history and geography. Lithuania has not been dealt a good hand. Although historic threats from Germany have retreated, Russia remains a dangerous neighbour. Lithuania will be vulnerable until Russia undergoes a radical transformation...

It is little wonder that the resignation of Aivaras Abromavičius, Ukraine’s Lithuanian-born Minister of Economy, has created a political uproar and a government crisis. The move should also encourage Lithuania and like-minded countries to sharpen policies towards Kiev.

After official announcement of the US plans to quadruple its defence budget for Europe, Lithuania's Defence Minister Juozas Olekas says this would mean deployment of a larger number of US troops and equipment in Lithuania.

Many in Lithuania have been criticizing Poland's new government, but former Lithuanian ambassador to the US Žygimantas Pavilionis believes that the return of a strategic partnership between Poland and Lithuania should be our greatest foreign policy priority. According to Pavilionis, those now critic...

Russian propagandists were not long ago deriding the inability of Baltic States to defend themselves but are now seeing something different: a threat to Russia.

Lithuania’s Defence Ministry said that NATO jets patrolling airspace over the Baltic Countries scrambled 160 times to intercept Russian planes in 2015, up 14% on the previous year.

At the beginning of the year, Lithuania's Ministry of National Defence released a booklet for civilians and military personnel alike called Prepare to Survive Emergencies and War with tips on surviving hostile invasions and other calamities. Now, the ministry has released an updated version with new...

Lithuania is a small country in comparison to Russia. So why does the Kremlin pay Lithuania a disproportionate amount of its attention? One reason is that it needs weak enemies that it can divert its people’s attention to. There was a time when Russian polls indicated that they saw Lithuania as thei...

A week after Gediminas Grina, the former chief of Lithuania’s State Security Department (VSD) compared the country’s ethnic minority schools to “education ghettos” and called for their removal, Klaipeda’s Russian school teachers are still upset about his comments.

Russian president Vladimir Putin has repeatedly denied the presence of Russian troops in Ukraine, but that changed today at a nationally televised press conference in Moscow where Putin confirmed that Russian military specialists had been sent to support Crimean separatists.