Putin's Russia

The security situation would not change even if the war in Ukraine was stopped, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis says.

The current global situation is much more dangerous than it was during the Cold War because the rules that existed then are absent now, and Russia is attempting to force a directionless West to play according to its rules according a leading analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center.

Lithuanian and foreign military analysts have been looking into hypothetical scenarios of a hybrid war breaking out in the Baltics for some time now - most of them envisage an attack from Russia, forgetting or simply ignoring the possibility of such an attack coming from Belarus.

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 critic...

In the last essay of this series, I presented the experience of historic and recent Russia‘s impact in Greece, now I will attempt to look at one of the new member states of the European Union – the Czech Republic.

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 stor...

In the latest article of this series (“Putin’s Russia. Kremlin’s Goal No. 1”) I analysed the theory and practice of Russian foreign policy trying to ground the thesis that Kremlin’s main goal is to undermine the EU and NATO, and bring the world back to the times of international power balance.

This time I decided to take a closer analytic look and find an answer which becomes more and more important both in Lithuania and the Western countries when speaking about Kremlin’s aggressive actions.

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...

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 Put...

Lithuania is very likely to be the only European Union country to completely boycott the end of World War Two commemoration event in Moscow on 9 May. Unlike our closest neighbours - Latvia and Estonia - we will not be even sending a diplomat to the ceremony.

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 Ma...

Assassination of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was a shocking wake-up call for many all over the globe. Circumstances were more than eloquent – bullets hit Nemtsov right in front of Kremlin and merely one day before the planned protest march.

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 h...

The Lithuania Tribune / EN.DELFI TV presents Lilia Shevtsova's take on the current regime in Kremlin. Shevtsova spoke during a panel discussion at the Snow Meeting and the Vilnius Forum of Intellectuals, which took place on 16 January in Vilnius. Lilia Shevtsova is a Senior Fellow, Brookings Institu...

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 mercil...

Again, this article will not be related to the structure, clans, their interrelations, and KGB basis in Putin’s current regime. This essay is a sequel of the previous piece which aimed to take another glimpse at Putin’s suspicious links with international terrorism.

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 Y...

It was all over the world news when Lithuanian president Dalia Grybauskaitė publicly stated that Russia was a “terrorist country”. She later explained that Russia “has attributes of a terrorist state”.

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 bet...