• NATO battalion will arrive in Latvia by June

    A NATO Battalion headed by Canada with more than 1000 servicemen will arrive in Latvia by the end of June.

    This was stated by the Commander of the Joint Headquarters of the Latvian National Armed Forces, Leonids Kalnins, as reported by the Delfi news website.

    “Before June, smaller NATO units will arrive in Latvia, which will prepare for the arrival of the battalion. By June, the complete battalion will arrive in Latvia,” Kalnins said.

    According to him, it is expected that the battalion will …

  • Ukrainian forces advanced 20 kilometers towards Debaltseve over the last year

    During the last year, the soldiers of the 54th separate mechanized brigade of the Ukrainian armed forces and the contract soldiers of the Podolyanina Wolves special forces unit of the Pravy Sector, which is a part of the Ukrainian military, who are deployed along the Svitlodarsk Salient, advanced by  almost 20 kilometers towards Debaltseve.

    The information has been confirmed by the Ukrainian volunteer activist Yuriy Mysyagin on his Facebook page.

    “Our positions on Svitlodarsk Salient are …

  • Biden is convinced that Russia will try to interfere in European elections

    The Vice President of the United States, Joe Biden, called Russia the greatest threat to the international liberal order, predicting that Moscow will try to influence the course of elections in Europe, as it did in the United States, Reuters reported.

    Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Biden stated that, “Under Vladimir Putin’s presidency, Russia is working with every tool available to undermine the European project, test the fault lines of Western countries and return …

  • Lithuania approves an updated national security strategy

    On Tuesday, Lithuanian Parliament approved an updated strategy of national security, as reported by Delfi news agency. 107 members of Seimas voted in favor of the document. No one was against it. One person abstained.

    14 threats and risk factors are listed in the strategy. The updated National Security project was prepared by the previous administration. The strategy was last reviewed in 2012 and was planned to be adapted to the changed situation.

    Conventional military threat was the first …

  • As part of lawsuit against Russia, Ukraine demands that ban on Crimean Tatar Mejlis be lifted

    Ukraine demands that Russia stop the persecution of the Crimean Tatars and restore the activity of the Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar People as part of Kyiv's lawsuit against Moscow that was filed with the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

    “We demand that Russia stop the violations of the International Convention on the elimination of all forms of racial discrimination and to take measures to protect all ethnic groups in the occupied Crimea, in particular, Crimean Tatars and Ukrainians. …

  • Ukrainian Foreign Minister and OSCE head discuss expanding Special Monitoring Mission in the Donbas

    The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, Pavlo Klimkin, and the Acting Chairman of the OSCE, the Austrian Minister for Foreign Affairs and Integration, Sebastian Kurz, discussed the strengthening of the Special Monitoring Mission of the OSCE in the Donbas.

    “We talked about the importance of strengthening the mission both in terms of its personnel and in a technical sense,” Klimkin stated at a joint press conference with Kurz in Kyiv. The Ukrainian Foreign Minister also noted that after the …

  • Head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine announced plans to 'return' the Donbas in 2017

    The Ukrainian Interior Minister, Arsen Avakov, urged border guards to prepare for the "de-occupation of the Donbas" as soon as this year.

    "In 2017, our goal is to attain the internationally recognized State border in the Donetsk Basin, and in the future, of the Crimea, as well. This process will involve the police, guards, and judicial authorities, but the border guards will be the first to act," he said, according to UNIAN.

    According to the head of the Interior Ministry, the border guards …

  • Polish diplomats were not let into Russia through the border with Belarus

    Border guards turned away the Polish diplomats, who were trying to cross the Russian-Belarusian border in the Smolensk region.

    The incident occurred at the Krasnaya Gorka checkpoint. According to the FSB border management of the region, two cars with diplomatic license plates traveled from Belarus to Russia and were stopped at the border between the two countries on a Moscow-Minsk highway.

    A border guard spokesman, Alexander Laznenko, explained that there are no border control staff that …

  • Ukrainian experts react to new IMF requirements

    On January 16, Evropeyska Pravda newspaper published a document that it calls the latest version of the memorandum on cooperation between Ukraine and the IMF. To receive the next billion-dollar tranche, Ukraine must meet 12 requirements, seven of which are new. The requirements include carrying out pension reform by raising the retirement age to 63 years, selling the land, abolishing the simplified tax system, dealing with the registry of the recipients of social payments and other unpopular …

  • US Permanent Representative to the UN: Russia's actions threaten the world order

    Russia is undertaking aggressive and destabilizing actions that threaten the world order, as stated by the U.S. Permanent Representative to the UN, Samantha Power, Reuters reported.

    "Russia's actions do not support the international order. They undermine the one that already exists," she said.

    In her speech, Power referred to the "Russian intervention" in the conflict in southeastern Ukraine, Russia’s support of the government in the civil war in Syria, and "attempts to influence elections in …