Jan 25, 2012 - Lithuania and Latvia want unity...
VILNIUS - Lithuanians and Latvians are the only surviving nations speaking in languages of the Balts, while the third big ethnos of the Balts, the Prussians, disappeared after it was partially extinguished and partially Germanized in the Middle Ages – only their land was still called Prussia until the end of WWII. At the beginning of last year, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Audronius Azubal...
Jan 25, 2012 - Rasmussen ridicules Kaliningrad militarization...
VILNIUS - From Jan. 18-20, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen visited Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia. Rasmussen had meetings with the Lithuanian leadership in Vilnius: Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite, PM Andrius Kubilius, Defense Minister Rasa Jukneviciene and Foreign Minister Audronius Azubalis. Rasmussen was expected in Lithuania in November, but he postponed the visit. Speak...
Jan 18, 2012 - Snow Meeting focuses on Nordic cooperation and pr...
VILNIUS - On Jan. 11-12, Lithuanian, Latvian and Swedish foreign ministers, high-ranking diplomats of other Western countries, and officials of the EU and NATO as well as experts of think tanks from the USA, Baltic and Nordic countries, Germany, UK, France, Turkey, Hungary and other countries attended the Snow Meeting in the Lithuanian town of Trakai. This was already the fifth such annual wint...
Jan 11, 2012 - Russia intrudes into Baltic airspace...
VILNIUS - Russian intrusions into Baltic airspace in recent months are as numerous as ever before, Dennis Andersen, head of the Danish unit of military pilots stationed in the Lithuanian town of Siauliai, stated on Jan. 4. On that day, a Danish unit of F-16 fighter jets was replaced with a German unit of F-4 fighter jets and some 100 German soldiers in the rotating NATO Air Policing mission to ...
Jan 04, 2012 - Lithuanian tricolor over the Polish factor...
VILNIUS - On Jan. 1, a parade of soldiers and young women dressed in national attire, along with a crowd of some 100 enthusiasts, including Parliament Speaker Irena Degutiene and Defense Minister Rasa Jukneviciene, marched uphill to the tower built by Gediminas. He was the pagan ruler of the ascending Lithuanian empire of the 14th century who turned Vilnius into the capital city of that empire....
Dec 22, 2011 - Lithuanian diplomacy in 2011...
Lithuanian foreign policy is not boring, and it often shows no inferiority complex common to a small state, at least when the vital issues of security or human rights are in question. “She, according to a source in Brussels, ‘perfectly understands strategic and tactic games.’ She can show the middle finger to Moscow as well as to Washington and knock her fist on the table when...
Dec 14, 2011 - Baltic cooperation twenty years later...
VILNIUS - The Balts, twenty years after re-establishment of their independent states, have finally found firm ground for their unity – common strategic projects that are vital for their economies and security. “We are members of the European Union, yet the actual integration of the Baltic region into the European Economic Area has not been completed until now. We should stand togeth...
Dec 07, 2011 - European Parliament rejects immunity request from ...
VILNIUS - Next year will not be boring for Viktor Uspaskich, leader of the liberal center-left Labor Party and member of the European Parliament: he will probably participate in the forming of the ruling coalition, with a chance to become the new PM after the parliamentary elections in the fall of 2012. There is, though, the possibility that he may be forced to go to prison on the eve of these ...