RUSSIAN FORCES IN KALININGRAD TO ACCEPT LITHUANIAN FOOD AID.

Russian military forces in Kaliningrad region will accept food as humanitarian aid from Lithuania, says Colonel Valery Vengrov, head of those forces’ food supply service. Vengrov refused to disclose the current state of the forces’ food stocks, on the grounds of military secrecy. He admitted, however, that Moscow has stopped financing food purchases, and that the Baltic fleet and ground troops attached to it have gone into debt to Lithuanian commercial suppliers. The colonel spoke in an interview with the Strazh Baltiki newspaper cited by Lithuanian media yesterday (BNS, September 16).

Lithuania offered last week to provide humanitarian aid after Kaliningrad region’s administration had announced that the population and the military face a supply crisis. The troops nevertheless managed to conduct a combat exercise last week, repelling a simulated “Western invasion” (see the Monitor, September 8, 9 and 15). The region was a major food supplier, as part of Germany, until 1945.

BELARUSAN GROUP DEFENDS NATIVE LANGUAGE.