No Picture

Why Lithuanian officials are not going to Moscow on 9 May

On 8 May each year, the world pays tribute to the victims of World War Two. The following day, 9 May, Russia celebrates its Victory Day with pompous parades of tanks and displays of arms. This year, on the 70th anniversary of the end of World War Two, many Western leaders turned down invitations to come to Moscow, sending instead their lower-ranking representatives, mostly their ambassadors, to Russia. […]

Rimvydas Valatka
Society

Rimvydas Valatka: Critical journalism has no place in Lithuanian media

Rimvydas Valatka has long been regarded as one of the titans of the Lithuanian media. A long-time chief editor of Lietuvos Rytas, Lithuania’s biggest and most influential daily newspaper, Valatka has been a household name and one of the most biting pens in the industry, hated by some and revered by others, but a force to be reckoned with. It therefore sent a wave of shock and surprise across the media industry when he was recently dismissed as editor-in-chief of 15min.lt, Lithuania’s second online news portal. […]

No Picture

Why Lithuania banned Russian TV channel

Lithuania made international headlines last week when its Radio and Television Commission decided to institute a blanket ban on all programmes of a Russian TV channel. The channel in question, RTR Planeta, is registered in Sweden, but its content is entirely Russian-produced. The Commission had previously suspended broadcasts of individual programmes, saying they violated Lithuanian laws, but RTR Planeta would not stop. […]

No Picture

Russia’s militarization of Kaliningrad – sign of forthcoming military stand-off?

Media around the world are increasingly focusing on Kaliningrad as the possible next site of Russian-Western confrontation, as Moscow keeps dispatching military equipment to its enclave squeezed between Lithuania and Poland. […]

Vytautas Dumbliauskas
Opinion

Opinion: Why is Russia raising stakes in east Ukraine?

Why have we seen an intensification of military action in eastern Ukraine? Government forces report that Russian troops are pushing towards not just Donetsk Airport, but essentially in all directions. This way, all previous predictions about how the military conflict will only smoulder during the winter but won’t advance have burst like soap bubbles. Fierce fighting has recommenced, civilians are dying as well as soldiers. […]

Dalia Grybauskaitė, Donald Tusk
European Union

President Grybauskaitė on EU investment plan: The goal now is to cause the snowball effect

The European Union‘s key goal is to start a snowball effect so that each euro from public coffers attracts 15 euros of investment from various other sources, Lithuania’s President Dalia Grybauskaitė has told LRT radio before leaving for a Brussels summit on Thursday. […]

Vykintas Pugačiauskas
Opinion

Opinion: Reality check for Russia

If there was anything surprising in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s annual address to the Federal Assembly it was that there was nothing new in it. It seems that slowly, very slowly, something is dawning on the Kremlin: a gloomy realization that Vladimir Putin is no saviour. […]

Lithuanian Ambassador Žygimantas Pavilionis questioning the funding and a strategy to fight Russian propaganda at UABA meeting.  Photo Ludo Segers
Foreign affairs

Lithuanian ambassador Žygimantas Pavilionis: We do not invest in our relations with the United States

Lithuanian Ambassador to the United States of America Žygimantas Pavilionis thinks that the US administration under President Barack Obama has been naive in wishing to “reset” relations with Russia, but this is the trap that every new president falls into. He hopes, however, that Obama’s successor – be it Hillary Clinton or someone else – will have a better grasp on geopolitical realities of Eastern Europe. […]

Society

Former Constitutional Court judge: Lithuania can consider allowing dual citizenship

The Lithuanian parliament has begun debates on amendments to the Law on Citizenship proposed by President Dalia Grybauskaitė. The bill is intended to expand possibilities for Lithuanian citizens to also hold passports of other countries. […]

No Picture

Opinion: Hunting down propaganda in media fields

Since the beginning of war in Ukraine, the concept of propaganda has become a keyword in the agendas of Lithuanian politicians and the media. The ruling majority of the Seimas and the president (together with the right-wing groups in the opposition) are taking diametrically opposite positions in the political arena regarding to measures to fight propaganda. After the Seimas rejected the president’s amendment to the Law on Public Information, there is no shortage of forecasts about large-scale disasters in our information space. […]

Energy

Lithuania’s LNG terminal: Less dependence on Russian gas, but more dependence on fossil fuel?

This Monday, Lithuania congratulated itself on finishing a seminal project in its energy independence policy and welcomed the floating liquefied natural gas terminal in the Baltic port of Klaipėda, from where it will open a second gas import line, an alternative to Russia’s gas giant Gazprom that had monopolized the Lithuanian gas market. […]