... Soviet Union, became members of NATO, an alliance directed against Russia. And contrary to their official status as “neutral” countries, Sweden and Finland, have after the Cold War also become more or less NATO members de-facto. Should the three Baltic states and even Finland one day become highly militarized by NATO, they will pose a permanent and acute threat of strategic surprise-attack against the Saint Petersburg and Pskov region, one of Russia’s centers. Also, after the Cold War, the ...
... more significant factor. The same goes for the expansion of NATO's Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF).
Changes are taking place in Russia as well. Moscow has managed to implement a massive, the four NATO battalions deployed in Poland and the Baltic states and apparently successful, military reform, creating " more compact, mobile, and possibly more efficient armed forces. A number of military units have been restored; in particular, three divisions were deployed on the country s southwestern ...
Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Moldova, Belarus, Ukraine
The process of the breakup of the USSR into independent states naturally aggravated tensions between the newly formed countries. Unfortunately, political and economic disputes sometimes erupted into armed conflicts. Most of them resembled civil wars and inter-ethnic confrontations — wounds that take a long time to heal. To this day, a number of conflicts in the region have been merely frozen and not resolved. New hotbeds of tension have appeared...
... fighting against international terrorism on the global scale. Each of the tasks requires significant political investments from both sides, neither of them we can take for granted.
2) Russian upcoming military exercise Zapad-2017 is causing concern in the Baltic States and NATO. Do you think Russia is interested in making the exercise transparent and defensive or is it rather going to be a demonstration of force meant to frighten NATO´s eastern members?
You should keep in mind that Russia – even the ...
... in Wales.[2] At the summit, NATO leaders agreed that all member states should meet a “guideline” of spending a minimum of two percent of their gross domestic product (GDP) on defense, a goal originally conceived in 2006.[3] Of the three Baltic states, only Estonia meets that goal with currently 2.16% of its GDP being spent on defense. Lithuania and Latvia lag behind, spending 1.49% and 1.45% respectively.[4]
If this parameter is part of Trump’s would-be requirement, it makes ...
Russia will likely not take direct steps which would threaten the Baltic States and the integrity of NATO, Director General of the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) Andrey Kortunov told Baltic News Service (BNS) in an interview.
Relations between the Baltic States and Russia are “complicated and not ...
