It has often been remarked that politics can make strange bedfellows, bringing together groups that one could not imagine agreeing on anything. That is what has been happening in Latvia, where Latvian nationalists and ethnic-Russian residents of that Baltic country—for quite different reasons—both support restricting... MORE

The ceremony of opening the United States’ missile defense base in Deveselu, Romania, last week (Thursday, May 12), was greeted by a barrage of condemnation and criticism from Russian officials (see EDM, May 12). The next day, President Vladimir Putin turned these denouncements into state... MORE

During the first half of this month (May 2–19), Estonia is hosting one of the largest military exercises in its post-Soviet history—“Spring Storm 2016” (Delfi, May 2). These war games are being carried out in the three Estonian counties that border Russia: Tartu, Põlva and... MORE

Last week (April 12), two Russian Su-24 bombers closely overflew the guided-missile destroyer USS Donald Cook, in the Baltic Sea, in international airspace. The incident happened relatively close to the Baltiysk naval base, in the Kaliningrad enclave. Two days later, an Su-27 fighter intercepted a... MORE

In order to boost the role of the National Guard within the national defense system and to continue to develop its structures, Latvia’s Defense Minister Raimonds Bergmanis recently ordered the commander of the National Armed Forces, Raimonds Graube, to transform the current National Guard regional... MORE

The first ever meeting of the Forum of Free Russia took place on March 9–10, in Vilnius, Lithuania. It was a unique public event, featuring a direct dialogue between Russian political emigrants and oppositional activists still residing in Russia. Such a conference would be impossible... MORE

On the second anniversary of the start of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, the BBC gave its viewers a chance to “look inside the war room” with a program featuring a committee of former senior British military and diplomatic figures. In a quasi-documentary titled World War... MORE

Twenty-five years ago, Moscow’s massive nuclear weapons stockpile could not prevent the Soviet Union from falling apart, because of a conjunction of domestic problems and opposition from abroad, the influential Izborsky Club says. Today, Russia has recovered from the disasters of the 1990s; but the... MORE

Different time zones and long geographical distance separate Latvia from the southern borders of the European Union, which, since last year, has been absorbing an unprecedented influx of thousands of displaced persons escaping war and poverty in Syria and the wider Middle East or looking... MORE

The three small Muslim communities in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have had good relations both with the rest of the populations and the governments of these three Baltic countries. But the influx of refugees from Syria and the wider Middle East to Europe is now... MORE