Žygimantas Pavilionis
CORPORATE

Partnership with Poland should be Lithuania’s key foreign policy priority, says former ambassador to US

Many in Lithuania have been criticizing Poland‘s new government, but former Lithuanian ambassador to the US Žygimantas Pavilionis believes that the return of a strategic partnership between Poland and Lithuania should be our greatest foreign policy priority. According to Pavilionis, those now criticising the Polish government are the same people that accepted Barack Obama‘s attempts to reset the US relationship with Russia and improve the EU’s relationship with Russia. […]

Vladimir Putin and Greek PM Alexis Tsipras
Uncategorized

Putin’s Russia. Kremlin’s plan for Europe, bribe No. 1

In the previous articles of the series ‘Putin’s Russia: Kremlin’s Goals and Tools’, I analysed the theory and practice of Russia’s foreign policy and drew attention to the fact that Russia still uses the ammunition of USSR KGB – disinformation, influence agents, scandals (e.g., Edward Snowden’s story) and criminal activity: corruption, criminal world, drug trafficking and terrorism. So I will now move on to the cases of three countries and their policies – that, I believe, will be a perfect illustration of Kremlin’s capabilities. […]

Vladimir Putin and Sergey Shoigu
Uncategorized

Karen Dawisha: Signs of rift within Putin’s kleptocracy

Back when the future president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, was still working at the Mayor’s Office of Saint Petersburg, shiny new Mercedes cars were not quite as ubiquitous on the streets of the city as they are now. However, there were two parked in the yard of a newly renovated building that was to be converted to South Africa’s consulate. […]

No Picture
Uncategorized

Putin’s Russia. The dangerous illusion of independent and western oligarchs

I decided to dedicate one more essay in the “Putin’s Russia” series to Russian oligarchs because of one piece of news that attracted much less attention in Lithuania and internationally than it warranted: the former foreign minister of Sweden and one of the fiercest critics of President Valdimir Putin, Carl Bildt, accepted a consulting job at LetterOne, a Luxembourg-based company set up and run by Russian oligarchs. […]

No Picture
Opinion

Opinion: Russia’s nuclear blackmail and new threats of covert diplomacy

The world has truly entered a new era. Even Russia‘s nuclear blackmail has become such an everyday occurrence that it sometimes passes underappreciated. One concludes thus after last week’s reports in British dailies The Times and The Independent about a meeting between Russian and US generals in March where Russia voiced threats of a nuclear response should NATO continue to deploy forces in the Baltic states. […]

Peter Pomerantsev, „Epoch Times“ nuotr.
Uncategorized

Peter Pomerantsev: Big media need their Geneva convention

As Russia wages war in Ukraine, attacking not just military targets but also basic common sense with aggressive misinformation and propaganda campaign, information has become a security issue. Faced with new and quite unprecedented challenges, big media is approaching a moment when it will need to have a Geneva convention moment – get together and agree on a global self-regulation mechanism, says British journalist and author Peter Pomerantsev. […]

Monika Garbačiauskaitė-Budrienė
Opinion

Opinion: What terrorists and Putin have in store for us

For days now many in the global and Lithuanian media have locked horns over the terrorist acts in Paris. There are some who say that freedom to express one’s convictions is above any religious or social group interests; others contend that cartoons published by the likes of Charlie Hebdo made merciless mockery of believers’ feelings, that they cannot be subsumed under the “social group” category and have nothing to do with freedom of expression. […]

No Picture
Uncategorized

Putin’s Russia. Roots of today’s regime date back to KGB under Andropov

In the articles of Putin’s Russia series I have repeatedly written about Yevgeny Primakov’s clan. I have described in detail the ongoing battle regarding the implementation of the so-called peace plan in Ukraine, and Primakov’s influence structures both in Russia and in the West. The article about Yevtushenkov’s case was also inevitably related to the information about Primakov’s clan because the oligarch was considered the member of this clan. […]

Arnoldas Pranckevičius, euroblogas.lt
European Union

EP president’s adviser Pranckevičius: Russia is building a coalition against free world

Arnoldas Pranckevičius, adviser to the president of the European Parliament, says that while the European Union might seem slow and irresolute when it comes to external challenges like Russia‘s actions in Ukraine, its adherence to rules and procedures is what makes it a beacon of a different and better world. […]