The presidents of the three Baltic States — Estonia’s Alar Karis, Latvia’s Edgars Rinkevics, and Lithuania’s Gitanas Nauseda — have called for reforming the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), BNS reported. They stressed the need to support Ukraine and hold Russia accountable for its military aggression. Karis pointed to the UNSC’s current inability to resolve conflicts,…
Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics will pay a visit to the US on 17-27 September 2024, LSM reports. He will lead a Latvian trade delegation to California, visiting major technology companies, including Google, Groq, Meta, and OpenAI, as well as NASA’s Ames Research Center. Also, Rinkevics will take part in a roundtable discussion at Stanford University….
Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna urged Western countries to lift all restrictions on Ukraine’s use of Western weapons in the war with Russia, ERR reports. “Ukraine cannot fight with its hands tied behind its back and yet win this war,” he stated. Also, he called for caution over various “peace initiatives” to end the war,…
Political leaders of Baltic Sea countries criticised the US strategy on the war in Ukraine at the GLOBSEC 2024 Forum in Prague, The Baltic Sentinel reported. Estonian Defence Minister Hanno Pevkur stressed the need for strategic clarity: “We want Ukraine to win, not just to fight,” he stated. Speaking to the Kyiv Independent, Latvian Defence…
Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda said that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow undermines confidence in Hungary’s EU presidency, BNS reports. Nauseda said that Orban’s “unilateral decision” to visit Moscow does not represent the EU position. “If you truly seek peace, you do not shake hands with a bloody…
The decision of NATO’s Vilnius summit not to invite Ukraine to join the alliance reflects the view of the leaders of the bigger Western countries on how the war in Ukraine may end, Estonian MP Raimond Kaljulaid (SDE), head of the Estonian delegation to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, says. Writing in an opinion piece for…
Ukraine’s future is in NATO, and the country will join the defence alliance, Latvia’s Prime Minister, Krisjanis Karins, stated, Baltic News Network reports. Speaking at the opening of the newly-formed NATO-Ukraine Council, Karins said that the longer Russia continued the war in Ukraine, the more united NATO would become. He said that there were two…
Russian President Vladimir Putin was wrong when he thought that the war in Ukraine would break NATO unity, US President Joe Biden said in a speech at Lithuania’s Vilnius University on 12 July 2023, LETA reports. “Putin thought that democratic leaders would be weak, but he thought wrong,” Biden stated. He assured that the US…
The heads of parliaments of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Germany have signed a joint declaration, calling on the NATO summit in Vilnius to commit to Ukraine’s eventual membership of the alliance, Ukrinform reports. The parliamentary speakers called on NATO allies to work closely together to develop security commitments for Ukraine. At the same time,…