Vladimir Putin, Barack Obama
Opinion

Opinion: Leader and democracy

Nobody takes much notice when the leader of any Western country stays out of the public eye for a period of time. And this is because the state has a governance structure which provides for substituting one official with another, if need be, all the way to the top. […]

Žmonės prie Aukščiausiosios Tarybos rūmų
Opinion

Opinion: Whatever happened to our enemies of 25 years ago

Can we speak about our former enemies and talk to them, or shall we keep the distance, ignore and insist that they are not worth our attention? I’ve concluded the following: if we are scared of something, we tend to pretend that it simply does not exist. If we are able to look into the eyes of the former enemy, it means that today we are ready to stand up to them again and defend our beliefs. […]

Dalia Grybauskaitė ir Arvidas Bryne'as. Geiro Bolstado nuotr.
Foreign affairs

Arvid Bryne, Norwegian journalist who helped organize first Lithuanian delegation to the West

Arvid Bryne is a well-known Norwegian journalist and author and one of the best friends Lithuania has in Norway. A quarter of a century ago, he was among those who witnessed first-hand the challenges that Lithuania went through to build an independent and democratic state; moreover, he lent a hand in dealing with some of them. […]

Leonidas Donskis and Mikhail Khodorkovsky
Opinion

Opinion: Is Mikhail Khodorkovsky the devil’s advocate? II

This January, the Vilnius-based Eastern Europe Studies Centre organized another big two-day international event for experts, politicians and intellectuals. The centrepiece of the second day of the conference was an address by none other than Mikhail Khodorkovsky. He was introduced by liberal Lithuanian thinker Leonidas Donskis who had taken great interest in supporting the prisoner during his term as a member of the European Parliament and had even received Khodorkovsky’s thank-you letter from prison. The prisoner had written he was touched by Donskis’ belief that he was fated for an important role in the history and politics of Russia. […]

Opinion

Opinion: From rouble to euro

The first day of this year is the first day of Lithuania with the euro. It is an unavoidable fact, although probably everyone is already tired of hearing the word euro. I must admit: it is certainly much better that the euro is not in everyone’s lips but in everyone’s pockets. Soon enough the currency change fever will go down and we will be less concerned with the pros and cons of having the euro than with having as many euros as we can. […]

Ramūnas Bogdanas
Opinion

Opinion: Beware of unwavering optimists

As the saying goes, a pessimist is just a well-informed optimist. Russia‘s president is able to get any kind of information, but this is not enough: it is important how this information is processed and used. One can judge from Vladimir Putin‘s 3 hours and 10 minutes long press conference, where he answered 53 questions, that his mind is protected from reality by a very dense sieve which only lets through information that he anticipates. The rest is rejected or modified in such a way that it becomes unrecognisable. […]

Vladimiras Putinas, Peng Liyuan
Opinion

Opinion: The importance of manners in the East

A small episode recently has shown that Russian President Vladimir Putin feels like he is a know-it-all who can ignore his advisory team. It happened in Beijing during the fireworks show for the APEC summit participants. […]