Tag Archives: Lithuania

WWIII looms as U.S. declares support for Lithuania; Russia vows retaliation

Revelations 6:3-4 “when he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!” 4 And out came another horse, bright red. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that people should slay one another, and he was given a great sword.

Important Takeaways:

  • The West rises against Putin: Finland warns Russia it is ready to fight them and US declares NATO’s ‘ironclad’ support for Lithuania as Moscow’s fury grows over Kaliningrad blockade
  • Finland’s armed forces chief said the country has been preparing for war against Russia for decades
  • Lithuania blocked goods sanctioned by the EU from reaching the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad
  • US said it would defend fellow NATO member Lithuania if Russia launched attack
  • Russia vowed to retaliate with measures that ‘will have a serious negative impact on the Lithuanian population’ after country blocked coal and metals from Russia

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Live fire drills near Kaliningrad as Lithuania blocks goods being transported into Russia

Revelations 6:3-4 “when he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!” 4 And out came another horse, bright red. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that people should slay one another, and he was given a great sword.

Important Takeaways:

  • Russia’s Baltic Fleet to launch live-fire exercises in Kaliningrad Region
  • “About 1,000 servicemen and over 100 units of combat and special equipment of artillery and missile units will take part in the maneuvers in the Kaliningrad region,” stated the report according to RBC.
  • The news follows Russia threatening to revoke the recognition of Lithuania as an EU state due to the blockade in the Kaliningrad region, as stated by the Chairman of the Provisional Commission of the Federation Council on Protection of State Sovereignty and Prevention of Interference in Russia’s Internal Affairs, Senator Andrei Klimov, on Monday, June, 20.

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‘Calm Before the Storm’ as Ukraine prepares for increase in attacks, EU cuts shipments to Russian outpost in Baltics

Revelations 6:3-4 “when he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!” 4 And out came another horse, bright red. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that people should slay one another, and he was given a great sword.

Important Takeaways:

  • Moscow fumes after EU cuts off shipments to Baltic outpost
  • Russia’s separatist proxies said they were advancing towards Kyiv’s main battlefield bastion. A Ukrainian official described a lull in fighting there as the “calm before the storm”.
  • The latest diplomatic crisis is over the Kaliningrad enclave, a port and surrounding countryside on the Baltic Sea that is home to nearly a million Russians, connected to the rest of Russia by a rail link through EU- and NATO-member Lithuania.
  • Lithuania has shut the route for basic goods including construction materials, metals and coal, which it says it is required to do under EU sanctions that took effect

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Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia seek enhanced NATO presence

Revelations 6:3-4 “when he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!” 4 And out came another horse, bright red. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that people should slay one another, and he was given a great sword.

Important Takeaways:

  • Baltic states demand massive NATO buildup – media
  • Some 20,000 troops are to be deployed to any of the three nations in case of a threat, a proposal seen by the Washington Post says
  • Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia are actively seeking an enhanced NATO presence in Eastern Europe amid the ongoing conflict in Ukraine
  • The Baltic states cite a potential threat from Moscow as a reason for the buildup. “Russia can rapidly mass military forces against NATO’s eastern border and confront the Alliance with a short war and fait accompli,” the document says, adding that “Russia’s direct military aggression
  • According to the media outlet, some Eastern European nations are also asking NATO to officially withdraw from the 1997 Founding Act between the military bloc and Russia, which limits permanent NATO deployments east of Germany.

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Estonia prepares for Putin’s next move

Revelations 6:3-4 “ when he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!” 4 And out came another horse, bright red. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that people should slay one another, and he was given a great sword.

Important Takeaways:

  • ‘Rest now, while we can.’ At Estonian NATO base, troops prepare for Putin’s next move
  • ‘We have prepared for Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and all the Baltic Sea region to face the same kind of military incursion,’ says base commander.
  • Colonel Andrus Merilo: said his troops had long prepared for such a scenario based on lessons from Estonia’s history — it was occupied by the Soviet Union for 48 years — and Russia’s aggression against its neighbors over recent years.
  • The flags of NATO, Estonia, the U.K., the EU, France and Denmark — all of which have troops here — flapped atop poles above their heads.
  • After Russia invaded Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014, the Baltics called on NATO to deploy troops across its eastern edges. In 2016, at a summit in Warsaw, NATO leaders decided to rotate troops permanently through Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland.
  • Merilo said he believes taking Ukraine is only “an intermediate goal” for Putin and that NATO needs to be prepared for him to go further.

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Experts predict there’s more to come after Ukraine

Revelations 6:3-4 “ when he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!” 4 And out came another horse, bright red. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that people should slay one another, and he was given a great sword.

Important Takeaways:

  • Why Did Vladimir Putin Invade Ukraine?
  • Once he gains control over Ukraine, he will turn his focus to other former Soviet republics, including the Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, and eventually Bulgaria, Romania and even Poland.
  • “The Eurasian Empire will be constructed on the fundamental principle of the common enemy: the rejection of Atlanticism, the strategic control of the USA, and the refusal to allow liberal values to dominate us.” — Aleksandr Dugin, Russian strategist
  • “Normally wars that take place between states are about conflicts they have between them. Yet this is a war about the existence of one state, which is denied by the aggressor. That’s why the usual concepts of peacemaking — finding a compromise — do not apply. If Ukraine continues to exist as a sovereign state, Putin will have lost. – Ulrich Speck, German geopolitical analyst.

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Lithuania President states: Russia poses a long term threat…Deterrence is no longer enough

Matthew 24:6 “And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet.”

Important Takeaways:

  • Lithuania President Gitanas Nauseda to Blinken: Deterrence is no longer enough against Russia
  • “Russia’s reckless aggression against Ukraine once again proves that it is a long-term threat to European security, the security of our alliance,” he says.
  • He predicts that “Putin will not stop in Ukraine…. It is our collective duty as a nation to help all Ukrainians with all means available. By saying all, I mean, indeed all means, if we want to avoid the Third World War. The choice is in our hands.”

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Poland, Lithuania call for EU help with migration surge at Belarusian border

WARSAW (Reuters) – Poland and Lithuania on Friday called on European institutions to help them deal with a surge in illegal migration from Belarus over their borders, as tensions between EU countries and Minsk continues to grow.

On Thursday Poland accused Belarus of sending a growing number of migrants over the border in retaliation for Warsaw’s decision this week to give refuge to Krystsina Tsimanouskaya, a Belarusian athlete who refused to return home from the Tokyo Olympics.

“We condemn the weaponization of irregular migration by the Lukashenko regime with a goal of exerting political pressure on the EU and its individual Member States,” Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Simonytr said in a joint statement.

In the past two days alone 133 illegal migrants were stopped at the Belarusian border with Poland, compared to 122 during the whole of last year, a spokesperson for the Poland Border Guard said.

In recent weeks, Lithuania has also reported a surge in illegal border crossings from Belarus and said Minsk was flying in migrants from abroad and dispatching them into the EU.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko on Thursday accused Lithuania and Poland of fueling the migrant issue on the border.

In the statement, Poland and Lithuania appealed to the European Commission, Frontex, EASO, other EU member states, and partners outside the EU for political and practical support and called to strengthen EU migration and asylum policy.

“We firmly believe that the protection of external Schengen borders is not just the duty of individual member states but also the common responsibility of the EU,” the statement says.

European Union home affairs ministers and representatives of the EU border agency Frontex and Europol are set to discuss the issue on Aug. 18, a letter by Slovenia to EU diplomats seen by Reuters showed.

(Reporting by Alicja Ptak and Anna Wlodarczak-semczuk; Editing by Angus MacSwan and Raissa Kasolowsky)

Lithuania toughens Belarus border with razor wire to bar migrants

By Andrius Sytas

VILNIUS (Reuters) – Lithuania began building a 550-km (320-mile) razor wire barrier on its border with Belarus on Friday after accusing Belarusian authorities of flying in migrants from abroad to send illegally into the European Union.

The government said the military-style wire coil would cost 4.9 million euros ($5.81 million) to put up and run along most of the frontier, which passes over sparsely populated areas and large stretches of forest and marsh.

At a later date the barrier will be reinforced with a two meter (6.5 ft) high border fence topped by razor wire, costing an additional 41 million euros, the interior ministry said.

Hundreds of migrants have crossed from Belarus in recent days, most of them Iraqi citizens, Lithuania has said.

Belarus in May decided to allow migrants to enter Lithuania in retaliation for sanctions imposed by the bloc after Minsk forced a Ryanair flight to land on its soil and arrested a dissident blogger who was on board.

“If someone thinks we will close our border with Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Ukraine and will become a holding site for those running from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Tunis and further down Africa – if someone thinks so, he is misguided, to say the least,” Belarus president Alexander Lukashenko said on Tuesday.

Belarus is guarding the border now only as much as it is “profitable” to it, and as much as it can financially, the president said.

Lithuania responded on Wednesday by announcing it would put up the frontier barrier and deploy troops to prevent migrants crossing illegally into its territory.

In a related move, Lithuania’s parliament will meet on Tuesday to urgently pass legislation streamlining asylum application reviews, including shortening their initial review to no more than 10 days, Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte said.

All people who crossed the border illegally would be kept locked up, the draft law says, meaning an end to occasional short trips outside detention that are currently permitted.

Just over 1,500 people crossed the frontier illegally from Belarus this year, with 900 of them coming over in the first nine days of July.

The first stretch of the new barrier, to be completed on Friday, will run 500 meters (1,640 feet) in length and measure 1.8 meters (six feet) in height, the army defense chief’s spokeswoman Ruta Montvile told Reuters.

Simonyte told the national broadcaster she did not expect the migrant flow from Belarus to subside on its own.

“As the Belarus regime is making money from these people for visa charges and, I think, gets other income from them as well – it would be difficult to expect any positive trend without additional means of impact”, she said.

Simonyte said on Wednesday Belarus had been offering migrants flights to Minsk, citing documents found on at least one migrant who had reached Lithuania. She said the main airport from where people flew into Belarus was Baghdad, and her foreign minister said people also came Turkey.

The Lithuanian-Belarus border is 679-km (420-mile) long. About 78 km (48 miles) was fenced in preceding years, and about 258 km (160 miles) are monitored electronically, according to the interior ministry.

($1 = 0.8433 euros)

(Reporting by Andrius Sytas in Vilnius; Editing by Mark Heinrich, William Maclean)

Denmark, Norway temporarily suspend AstraZeneca COVID shots after blood clot reports

By Nikolaj Skydsgaard and Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen

COPENHAGEN (Reuters) – Health authorities in Denmark and Norway said on Thursday they had temporarily suspended the use of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine shots after reports of the formation of blood clots in some who have been vaccinated.

The move comes after Austria stopped using a batch of AstraZeneca shots while investigating a death from coagulation disorders and an illness from a pulmonary embolism.

Danish health authorities said the country’s decision to suspend the shots for two weeks came after a 60-year old woman in Denmark, who was given an AstraZeneca shot from the same batch that was used in Austria, formed a blood clot and died.

Danish authorities said they had responded “to reports of possible serious side effects, both from Denmark and other European countries.”

“It is currently not possible to conclude whether there is a link. We are acting early, it needs to be thoroughly investigated,” Health Minister Magnus Heunicke said on Twitter.

The vaccine would be suspended for 14 days in Denmark.

“This is a cautionary decision,” Geir Bukholm, director of infection prevention and control at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (FHI), told a news conference.

FHI did not say how long the suspension would last.

“We … await information to see if there is a link between the vaccination and this case with a blood clot,” Bukholm said.

Also on Thursday, Italy said it would suspend use of an AstraZeneca batch that was different to the one used in Austria.

Some health experts said there was little evidence to suggest the AstraZeneca vaccine should not be administered and that the cases of blood clots corresponded with the rate of such cases in the general population.

“This is a super-cautious approach based on some isolated reports in Europe,” Stephen Evans, professor of pharmacoepidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, told Reuters.

“The problem with spontaneous reports of suspected adverse reactions to a vaccine are the enormous difficulty of distinguishing a causal effect from a coincidence,” he said, adding that the COVID-19 disease was very strongly associated with blood clotting.

AstraZeneca on Thursday told Reuters in a written statement the safety of its vaccine had been extensively studied in human trials and peer-reviewed data had confirmed the vaccine was generally well tolerated.

The drugmaker said earlier this week its shots were subject to strict and rigorous quality controls and that there had been “no confirmed serious adverse events associated with the vaccine.” It said it was in contact with Austrian authorities and would fully support their investigation.

The European Union’s drug regulator, the European Medicines Agency (EMA), said on Wednesday there was no evidence so far linking AstraZeneca to the two cases in Austria.

It said the number of thromboembolic events – marked by the formation of blood clots – in people who have received the AstraZeneca vaccine is no higher than that seen in the general population, with 22 cases of such events being reported among the 3 million people who have received it as of March 9.

EMA was not immediately available for comment on Thursday.

Four other countries – Estonia, Lithuania, Luxembourg and Latvia – have stopped inoculations from the batch while investigations continue, the EMA said.

The batch of 1 million doses went to 17 EU countries.

Swedish authorities said they did not find sufficient evidence to stop vaccination with AstraZeneca’s vaccine. Sweden has found two cases of “thromboembolic events” in connection with AstraZeneca’s vaccine and about ten for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

“We see no reason to revise our recommendation,” Veronica Arthurson, head of drug safety at the Swedish Medical Products Agency, told a news conference. “There is nothing to indicate that the vaccine causes this type of blood clots.”

Spain on Thursday said it had not registered any cases of blood clots related to AstraZeneca’s vaccine so far and would continue administering the shots.

(Additional reporting by Ludwig Burger in Frankfurt, Johan Ahlander in Stockholm, Victoria Klesty in Oslo and Kate Kelland in London. Editing by Alex Richardson, Nick Macfie and Bernadette Baum)