No Picture
Uncategorized

Russia’s military games for Baltic and Polish civilians and youth

With the Russian 9th of May celebrations of Soviet victory in World War Two approaching, many in the Baltic States are concerned about the potential risk of provocations or confrontation stemming from the more radical and disgruntled elements of the local Russian minority. Moreover, since Russia launched a shadow war in eastern Ukraine in 2014, NATO, American, and European governments have been increasingly concerned about the risks of hybrid warfare in Poland and the Baltic region. […]

No Picture
Opinion

Opinion: Is America losing the information war?

It would be hard to imagine Athenian generals worrying about the reporting of Spartan news or even, twenty-four centuries later, Douglas MacArthur caring much about media broadcasts from the land of the rising sun. But when General Philip Breedlove, the Supreme Commander of NATO, recently called on the West to make a greater effort to counter Russia’s toxic war of disinformation against Ukraine and its western allies, his concern made perfect military sense. In a world in which the dissemination of information is a key tactical element in violent conflicts, the West and America have remained far too passive in confronting both the insidious campaign of lies on Russian state-controlled media and the notoriously effective internet recruitment efforts of terrorist groups. […]

Vladimir Putin and Petro Poroshenko
Opinion

Opinion: So long sucker or how Putin’s propaganda succeeded in playing the extremists

In the 1950s, Nobel Prize winning mathematician John Forbes Nash invented a Machiavellian game entitled So Long Suckers. To win, a player had to game, and ultimately betray, his adversaries. Today, as they sit in frozen trenches in what was once aptly named the Wild Fields, it looks as if the soldiers of the ‘Union of People’s Republic’ are the ones that have been played. […]

Energy

Unsolved dilemma of Orlen Lietuva (Mažeikių Nafta)

The launch of Lithuania’s new LNG Terminal Independence in Klaipėda is cause for celebration as a victory over Russian gas dominance. as well as neighbouring Latvia and Estonia. However, another Lithuanian energy sector dilemma remains unresolved despite efforts of the European Commission and Vilnius and Warsaw –  the Russian eight year long oil ‘embargo’ against the Lithuanian oil refinery Orlen Lietuva (Mažeikių Nafta). […]

No Picture
Energy

Lithuania’s gas security: Risks and opportunities

There is a long-held view that the Russian gas supply to Lithuania is unlikely to be cut-off because Lithuania serves as a gas transit state to the Russian territory of Kaliningrad. In other words, the same gas pipeline feeding Lithuania, also supplies the Russian enclave. According to this argument, Moscow would be hesitant to turn off the gas supply to Lithuania because it would result in an automatic cut in the gas supply to Kaliningrad. […]

No Picture
Energy

Winter and Gazprom won’t wait: What the geopolitics of LNG will mean for the people of Ukraine and Europe

As the crisis in Ukraine is escalating with the prospect of Russian military intervention, there is every reason to believe that Vladimir Putin will use other weapons at his disposal. Thus European nations are increasingly – and justifiably – worried about the impending winter months when Russia could ratchet up the pressure on Europe, as it has done in the past, by imposing another gas halt with the consequent loss of life and negative economic impacts. […]