Lithuania: New government to make no major foreign policy changes
Lithuania’s new government is not expected to make any major changes in foreign policy, LRT…
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Welcome to Via Baltica, your “information superhighway” for news from the three Baltic tigers of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania! Our founder and editor-in-chief is Kerkko Paananen, senior news analyst with more than two decades of professional expertise in covering and reporting on current affairs in the Baltic States. We aim to do one thing well:…
Lithuania: New government to make no major foreign policy changes
Lithuania’s new government is not expected to make any major changes in foreign policy, LRT reports. Prime Minister Mindaugas Sinkevicius named regional security, Baltic cooperation, and strengthening ties with the US as his priorities, BNS and The Baltic Times reported. The government calls for a more united Europe, while maintaining strategic partnerships with Germany, Poland,…
Latvia: Central bank, Finance Ministry lower GDP forecasts
Latvia’s central bank and the country’s Finance Ministry have both lowered their GDP growth forecasts and raised their inflation forecasts. Latvia’s GDP growth will drop to 2.0% in 2026, before rising to 2.4% in 2027 and 3.0% in 2028, according to the Bank of Latvia’s latest macroeconomic projection. In December 2025, the central bank had…
Estonia: Justice chancellor frontrunner for president
Estonia’s Chancellor of Justice, Ülle Madise, is currently the strongest candidate to become the country’s next president, according to experts, ERR reports. Another possible candidate often mentioned is longtime diplomat Jonatan Vseviov, current secretary general of the Estonian Foreign Ministry. Political scientist Tõnis Leht of the Liberal Citizen Foundation (SALK) suggested that both Madise and…
Baltic: NATO turns from air policing to air defence
At their summit in the Turkish capital, Ankara, NATO leaders decided to turn the alliance’s rotating Baltic Air Policing mission into an air defence mission, ERR reported. The change will allow NATO fighter aircraft to respond more rapidly to threats in Baltic airspace. NATO’s air operations centre in Uedem, Germany, will have authority to decide…
Lithuania: Parliament approves new coalition government
The Lithuanian parliament, the Seimas, has approved the programme of incoming Prime Minister Mindaugas Sinkevicius’s coalition government, BNS reported. Altogether 72 MPs voted for, 29 against, and 4 abstained. After the vote, the government’s ministers were officially sworn in to their posts. The new coalition includes Sinkevicius’s Social Democratic Party of Lithuania, the Union of…
Latvia: Talks with new investor for airBaltic: PM
The Latvian government is in talks with a strategic investor for the country’s ailing national airline, airBaltic, Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs revealed, Reuters reported. He said that the potential investor was “a serious partner,” but refused to indicate what stake the investor could acquire. The state’s main condition was that the investor maintain airBaltic’s hub…
Estonia: MPs protest China’s “ethnic unity law”
A majority of members of the Estonian parliament, the Riigikogu, have signed a letter of protest against China’s new “law on ethnic unity,” BNS reported. In the letter sent to the Chinese embassy in Tallinn, the MPs noted that the law was aimed at assimilating ethnic minorities living in China, including Mongols, Tibetans, and Uyghurs….
Baltic: Russia planning provocations: intel
Russia may be planning provocations against the Baltic States or Poland to test NATO unity, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda and Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics warned, BNS and LETA reported. Nauseda said that intelligence indicated that Russia could be preparing “targeted kinetic operations” against critical infrastructure in the region. Rinkevics said that the intelligence reports pointed…
Lithuania: Coalition leaders suggest opening with China
China appears open to talks on normalising diplomatic relations with Lithuania, the chairman of the foreign affairs committee of the Lithuanian parliament, Remigijus Motuzas of the ruling Lithuanian Social Democratic Party (LSDP), stated, BNS reports. Speaking after a briefing by Foreign Minister Kestutis Budrys, Motuzas said that China was “inclined to meet, communicate, and negotiate”…