Lithuania: Belarusian officials named suspects in Ryanair hijack

The National Public Prosecutor’s Office of Poland has named three Belarusian nationals suspects in the hijacking of a Ryanair flight in May 2021, BNS reports. The Belarusian Air Force forced the Ryanair plane flying from Athens to Vilnius in Lithuania to land in Minsk. Belarusian authorities then arrested two opposition activists onboard. The three suspects held…

Read More

Lithuania: Defence spending to be raised over 3% of GDP: President

Lithuania plans to allocate more than 3% of its GDP to defence, President Gitanas Nauseda announced, BNS reports. Speaking during a joint press conference with Polish President Andrzej Duda in Warsaw, Nauseda said that Lithuania would follow Poland’s example of raising defence spending. Also, he said that the two countries would soon begin training Ukrainian…

Read More

Baltic: Estonia, Lithuania global leaders in wooden house exports

Estonia was the world’s largest exporter of prefabricated wooden houses in 2023, ELTA reports, citing Lithuanian business news portal Verslo Zinios. Estonia had a global market share of 21.5%, followed by Lithuania with 9.3% and Poland with 8%. Estonia’s exports of wooden buildings totalled EUR 390mn in 2023. Lithuania came in second with EUR 164mn, which…

Read More

Baltic: EU allocates another EUR 1.2bn for Rail Baltica project

The European Commission will allocate an additional EUR 1.2bn of EU funds for the construction of the Rail Baltica railway, the project’s coordinator, RB Rail, announced, LSM reports. Of the sum, around EUR 370mn will go to Estonia, EUR 346mn to Latvia, and EUR 458mn to Lithuania. Together with national co-financing, total available funding will…

Read More

Baltic: Power grids to exit Russian system in February 2025

The Baltic power transmission system operators (TSOs) have notified Russia and Belarus of their intention to decouple from the Russian-controlled IPS/UPS electricity system in February 2025, ERR reports. Estonia’s Elering, Latvia’s Augstsprieguma Tikls (AST), and Lithuania’s Litgrid informed the Russian and Belarusian TSOs that they would not extend the BRELL parallel energy system operation agreement….

Read More