On June 14, during the first international Global Cybersecurity Summit, in Kyiv, the secretary of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council, Oleksandr Turchynov, stated that “Ukraine has become a playground for the testing of the most up-to-date cyber techniques” by the Russian Federation (Ukrinform.ru,... MORE

“Not merely tanks and weapons can kill, words can too,” wrote archbishop Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, the leader of Belarusian Catholics, in his resentful letter to Svetlana Alexievich, the 2015 Nobel Prize laureate in literature. “The war that Russia started in Donbas is on Russia’s conscience,” Alexievich... MORE

Twice in the past several weeks, Russian intrusions put the Baltics on high alert. On June 1, several Russian soldiers, traveling from the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad without transit permits, were stopped in Lithuania (Apollo.lv, June 2). A week later, two Goryn-class tugboats—the MB-119 and... MORE

This piece originally appeared on Real Clear Defense on May 10, 2017. Jim Mattis will visit the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius this week, marking his first ever visit to the Baltics in his new capacity as U.S. Secretary of Defense.  Joining Mattis in Lithuania will... MORE

In early April 2017, the Latvian Ministry of Defense’s (MoD) Parliamentary Secretary Andrejs Panteļējevs publicly announced the country was returning to the concept of total or “comprehensive” defense, which it had abandoned after joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Latvia will maintain the strategy... MORE

Russian media outlets in Moscow and in the Baltic countries have stepped up their efforts to generate opposition among Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). These media sources have been putting out fake news stories suggesting that NATO was recruiting... MORE

Humor is a much more powerful “soft warfare” weapon in Russia’s hands than one might think. This month (March 2017), a team of academics from Latvia and Ukraine, in collaboration with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) Strategic Communications Center of Excellence (STRATCOM), presented their... MORE

The issue of closer defense cooperation among the three Baltic States—Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia—was raised again, on March 3, by defense professionals and distinguished speakers from the United Kingdom and the United States, during a conference on “Social Resilience Against Hybrid Threats in the Baltic... MORE

Since the beginning of February 2017, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has begun to implement the decision taken at the Alliance’s summit in Warsaw last July to deploy a rotational battalion-sized combat unit to each of the Baltic States and Poland. The bolstering of... MORE

The Latvian National Armed Forces (LNAF) are starting the year with a new commander. After having his appointment approved by the Latvian parliament in December 22, 2016, Major General Leonīds Kalniņš officially took over the position of chief of defense (CHOD) of the LNAF on... MORE