Baltic states ban Lukashenko amid crackdown on opposition

Yahoo – AFP, Tatiana Kalinovskaya, August 31, 2020

Belarus authorities are cracking down further on the opposition after three
weekends of mass protests

The Baltic states on Monday banned embattled Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko as he cracked down further on the opposition movement following another huge rally at the weekend.

EU members Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania announced entry bans against Lukashenko and 29 other high-ranking officials, citing human rights violations.

And the White House urged Russia to "respect" its neighbour's sovereignty and democracy and "the right of its own people to elect their own leaders freely and fairly".

Lukashenko has the backing of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has raised the possibility of sending military support if Belarus "starts to get out of control."

The sanctions from Minsk's ex-Soviet neighbours came after the third weekend of mass protests since the disputed August 9 presidential election. Both Lukashenko and opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who has taken shelter in Lithuania, claimed victory.

"We are sending the message that we need to do more than just issue statements, we must also take concrete action," Lithuania's Foreign Minister Linas Linkevicius told AFP.

The Belarusian foreign ministry said the sanctions would be counterproductive.

Lukashenko appeared to dangle the possibility of public consultation on 

constitutional reforms

"The history of our independent country shows eloquently that any attempts at sanctions on Belarus only lead their initiators to the opposite effect," ministry spokesman Anatoly Glaz said in a statement. 

But Belarus would be "obliged to take appropriate retaliatory measures," he warned. 

Police move against opposition

The European Union is also seeking to impose new travel bans and asset freezes on Lukashenko's circle to punish those they say are responsible for violence, arrests and vote fraud.

The latest sanctions followed mass opposition protests in Minsk Sunday, with an estimated turnout of more than 100,000 people. There were also protests in other cities.

The Belarusian authorities on Monday detained a member of the opposition's Coordination Council, set up by Tikhanovskaya's allies to organise a peaceful transfer of power.

Liliya Vlasova, a lawyer and international mediator, was detained after a search of her home, fellow Coordination Council member Pavel Latushko, a former arts minister, told AFP. 

The search was carried out by officers investigating financial wrongdoing from a state audit body, while the grounds for Vlasova's detention were not known, he said.

Protests over disputed elections in Belarus

She was the third Coordination Council member to be detained.

Other members, including Nobel-Prize winning author Svetlana Alexievich, have been summoned for questioning as "witnesses" over an investigation launched into an alleged attempt to seize power. 

The committee's press secretary Anton Rodnenkov received a summons for questioning on Tuesday.

And a strike leader at the Belaruskali potash plant, Anatoly Bokun, was jailed for 15 days on Monday, his second such sentence.

'Somewhat authoritarian'

Belarusian border guards refused entry Monday to the country's Catholic Archbishop, Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, even though he is a citizen. They gave no explanation.

The 74-year-old archbishop had condemned violence by police and prison guards against detained protesters. A spokesman said he had returned to Poland.

And Lukashenko dismissed the Belarus charge d'affaires in Spain, Pavel Pustovoy, state news agency Belta reported, days after he had posted comments on Facebook favouring a recount of presidential ballots.

Protesters speak with Belarusian special police officers at Sunday's rally to protest 

against disputed presidential election

Lukashenko on Monday acknowledged the country he has led since 1994 was "somewhat authoritarian" in comments to the head of the Supreme Court. 

He was speaking after perhaps the largest rally against his rule in Minsk, where protesters gathered outside his official residence.

Lukashenko acknowledged that people were calling for "changes", dangling the possibility of public consultation on constitutional reforms, which he suggested could be aimed at making courts more independent -- while insisting that in his view they were already.

He rejected opposition calls for a return to the 1994 Constitution in use before he pushed through changes increasing his own presidential powers.

The Peace March event was held on Lukashenko's 66th birthday and demonstrators left ironic gifts outside the Palace of Independence, guarded by heavily armed riot police and snipers.

Numerous journalists working for international media including AFP had their Belarusian foreign ministry accreditation revoked ahead of the protest without explanation. 

The Belarusian Association of Journalists said police detained nine journalists over the weekend.

Murder victim's plight prompts EU order on emergency calls

Yahoo – AFP, 5 September 2019

The European Court of Justice ordered that mobile phone operators hand over
data enabling calls to 112 to be localised

A horrific rape and murder of a kidnapped teen in Lithuania prompted the European Court of Justice on Thursday to order mobile phone operators to hand over data enabling the localisation of calls made to the international emergency number 112.

The 17-year-old girl, who was abducted and burnt alive in the boot of a car in 2013, made 10 desperate calls to 112 begging for help. However her number did not show in the call answering centre, preventing her being located.

The girl's family lodged a lawsuit, accusing Lithuania of failing to implement an EU directive requiring telecom operators to provide for free caller information to locate calls made to 112.

Thursday's decision by the court ordered that all phone operators in the EU give that information. They must do so even for phones which do not have a SIM card inserted but which are still able to connect to the 112 service.

Currently eight of the EU's 28 member states, among them France, do not allow phones without a SIM card to make 112 calls, according to the European Emergency Number Association.

In many cases, that was to prevent children playing with old mobile phones accidentally calling the emergency services number, it said.

The EU forms the core of the countries using 112 as an emergency number for mobile phones, originally offered on the GSM standard that Europe championed.

Later other countries adopted the number too, often alongside their own national emergency numbers, including Australia, China, India, Turkey and the United States.

The European Court of Justice ordered that mobile phone operators hand over data enabling calls to 112 to be localised.

Europe tussles for second knowing it's 'America First'

As US President Donald Trump vows to put "America first," a video from the Netherlands last week pleaded him to put their country second. Now, satirists from across Europe are making their own pitches to Washington.

Deutsche Welle, 3 February 2017

everysecondcounts.eu

In a casting show style they may hope appeals to the TV star turned US president, several European countries have broadcast videos attempting to persuade Donald Trump to give them second billing after "America First."

It started last week with a viral video from the Netherlands: "We totally understand it's going to be America first. But can we just say: The Netherlands second?" After all, the Netherlands' "orange" history and lax tax rules make it the ideal candidate, according to the comedian behind the video, Arjen Lubach.

In the space of a week, the video gathered more than 17 million views.

Now broadcasters from across Europe are sending out their own satirical videos messages to Trump and collecting them online at everysecondcounts.eu.

German comedian Jan Böhmermann broadcast Germany's satirical appeal to Trump on Thursday, where the video tried to impress the US president with by touting the fact Germany hosted "the best world wars" and building a "great German wall" and making the Russians pay for it then crying when it was torn down by David Hasselhof.

Böhmermann made headlines last year - and prompted an international incident - after he read a lewd poem about Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

This Swiss, meanwhile, promoted their "big, fat mountains," while the Portuguese talked up their "huge, enormous beaches."

Other contributions so far include Denmark, Belgium and Lithuania.

Every Second Counts announced on its Twitter feed that Luxembourg and Slovakia will be the next countries to post their pitches to the president.

dm/sms (AP, Every Second Counts)

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TV show says ‘Hello Mr Trump, this is the Netherlands’

Could the US be tried for war crimes in Afghanistan?

The ICC is looking into possible war crimes committed by the US in Afghanistan. There are doubts about whether any CIA agents will ever be prosecuted for torture - but there are other options.

Deutsche Welle, 15 November 2016

 The alleged kidnapping, torture and rape of detainees in Afghanistan by US armed forces are coming under more scrutiny at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.

Chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda's annual Preliminary Examination Activities report for 2015 found that "members of the US armed forces and the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) resorted to techniques amounting to the commission of the war crimes of torture, cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity, and rape."

The prosecutors have found evidence that 61 detainees were subjected to "torture, cruel treatment, outrages upon personal dignity" in Afghanistan between May 2003 and December 2014 (mostly at the outset of the war in 2003 and 2004). Meanwhile, the CIA is being investigated for the same crimes - as well as rape - against 27 detainees in Afghanistan and secret prisons in Poland, Romania and Lithuania.

Fatou Bensouda presented the report 

this week

Systematic cruelty

The ICC also underlined that the alleged crimes seemed to have been part of an officially sanctioned system "approved at senior levels of the US government." "The alleged crimes were not the abuses of a few isolated individuals," it read. "Rather, they appear to have been committed as part of approved interrogation techniques in an attempt to extract 'actionable intelligence' from detainees."

This systematic nature of the crimes increased their "gravity," the report added, and caused considerable suffering: "Some victims reportedly exhibited psychological and behavioral issues, including hallucinations, paranoia, insomnia, and attempts at self-harm and self-mutilation."

Andreas Schüller, program director for international crimes at the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR), welcomed the report, but emphasized that this was just part of a wider examination, and that the ICC itself was part of an international judicial process that also involves military and civilian courts in the US and elsewhere: there are criminal investigations and pending court cases ongoing in Spain, Germany, Poland, Romania and Lithuania into alleged crimes committed by the CIA - either because they were perpetrated on their territories or with the collusion of their security forces.

The ECCHR itself filed a lawsuit on behalf of the German-Lebanese man Khalid el Masri, who was a victim of the CIA's extraordinary rendition program and says he spent several months being tortured in Afghanistan.

"You also have cases currently open on Guantanamo against US officials by the French judiciary, where former Guantanamo commander Geoffrey Miller has been summoned earlier this year to appear as an accused witness," said Schüller. (Miller, a retired US army general, ignored the summons.)

Overcoming the obstacles

The fact that the US, like many African countries, is not a party to the ICC is not an obstacle to the investigation. For one thing, Afghanistan ratified the Rome Statute that underpins the court in 2003, and therefore any crimes carried out on its territory (whether by military personnel or not) are within ICC jurisdiction.

German citizen Khalid el Masri was
abused in Afghanistan by CIA agents

Moreover, as the ICC itself pointed out in a statement on Tuesday, its prosecutor's office is obliged to investigate all alleged crimes brought to its attention, regardless of potential legal problems. In the case of Afghanistan, prosecutors said on Tuesday that they will decide "imminently" whether to seek authorization to open a full-scale investigation.

But whether that will ever lead to any prosecutions of CIA agents is very doubtful. "It's not realistic, because the US has not signed the statute, and even if it had, the US government has said repeatedly that it will not extradite any of its citizens to the ICC," said Wolfgang Heinz, senior policy adviser at the German Institute for Human Rights.

Nevertheless, should the ICC decide to pursue its investigations and if it identifies US suspects living in other countries, it could seek their extradition. "That's been done before - the US embassy will apply pressure of course, but then you're not absolutely safe," Heinz said.

Not only that, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) can also file charges against European governments suspected of colluding in the CIA's human rights abuses. This has happened before: in 2014, the Polish government was convicted of collusion in the CIA's extraordinary rendition program and ordered to pay compensation to two men.

The US' alleged crimes are not the only ones being examined in Afghanistan - those perpetrated by the Taliban, other anti-government groups, and Afghan government forces are also mentioned in the report, as are war crimes by various parties in eight other conflict zones around the world - in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and South America.

German government says no tanks for Lithuania: report

The German government has rejected a request from Lithuania for Boxer tanks, according to a newspaper report. The decision has been criticized by both sides of the German governing coalition.

Deutsche Welle, 22 Feb 2015

A German soldier (R) looks on as an officer (R) calibrates the weapons of a Boxer
tank in the OP North base, near Baghlan on March 28, 2012. Johannes Eisele/
AFP/Getty Images

The German government has said it will not fulfill a request from its NATO ally and European Union partner Lithuania for the delivery of so-called Boxer tanks, a media report said on Sunday, citing the German Defense Ministry.

"A delivery of armored transport vehicles from the German army or the resale of vehicles that are to be procured in the next few years is not in our plans," a ministry spokesman said, according to Die Welt am Sonntag.

The paper reported that the decision was made in view of the German military's own requirements.

Lithuania's request came amid security fears fueled by Russia's alleged role in fighting in Ukraine, where Moscow has been accused by several countries of fomenting a pro-Russian insurgency and supplying weapons, equipment and even troops to support pro-Russian separatists. Moscow has denied any role in fighting and maintains any Russian soldiers in Ukraine are "volunteers."

Disputed decision

The decision by Berlin to reject the request has been criticized by defense commentators on both side of the governing German grand coalition, the paper said.

"We have a great interest in increasing the capability of our NATO partners in the Baltic," Social Democrat defense expert Rainer Arnold was quoted as saying.

Florian Hahn of the CSU, the Bavarian sister party of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats, said the fears of Baltic states were justified in view of the Ukraine crisis.

"In this position we are required to support our NATO and EU partners as much as possible. That is also the case for procurement plans like this one for the Boxer transport tank," he said.

tj/sms (dpa, AFP)

Related Article:

Germany ready to assist Lithuania in tank deal - New

Europeans should come clean on CIA torture

Nearly 10 years ago, allegations were raised against some European states for colluding with the CIA in post-9/11 anti-terror measures. Amnesty International is now calling on these nations to come clean.

Deutsche Welle, 20 Jan 2015

Amnesty International published a paper on Tuesday, January 20, calling for European countries that allegedly helped set up secret prisons for rendered terror suspects to disclose the full details of their collusion with the United States Central Intelligence Agency.

Amnesty's call comes a month after a damning report released by the US Senate documented CIA torture practices, including the transfer of terror suspects to third countries, a practice known legally as extraordinary rendition.

"Without European help, the US would not have been able to secretly detain and torture people for so many years. The [US Senate report released in December] makes it abundantly clear that foreign governments were essential to the success of the CIA operations - and evidence that has been mounting for nearly a decade points to key European allies," Julia Hall, Amnesty International's expert on counterterrorism and human rights, said.

The Senate report made no mention of names with regard to where the secret prisons were located, but Amnesty singled out three nations: Poland, Lithuania and Romania.

"The time for denials and cover-ups is over," Hall implored. "Governments can no longer rely on unsubstantiated 'national security' grounds and claims of state secrecy to hide the truth about their roles in the torture and disappearance of people. It's time for justice for all those who have suffered the gruesome practices - including waterboarding, sexual assault, and mock executions - that characterized these illegal counter-terrorism operations."

This is the location of one of the alleged 'black sites' in Lithuania

Legal action first on national level

The Senate report, compiled by the Committee for Intelligence, said at least 119 prisoners had been subjected to "coercive interrogation techniques, in some cases amounting to torture," at secret prisons - "black sites" - in Guantanamo Bay and a number of allied nations.

In addition to calling on the accused European nations to come clean, Amnesty also called for criminal investigations to take place and for "justice to be done," but it did not mention against whom or what form that justice could take.

"There is now a heightened call for domestic prosecutors in [Poland, Lithuania, and Romania] to institute criminal charges against anybody who was involved, including high-level politicians, intelligence and military intelligence officials," explained Martin Scheinin, Professor of International Law and Human Rights at the European University Institute.

Scheinin, who was the UN's first Special Rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism, told DW that, apart from domestic legal procedures, "international human rights mechanisms and ultimately international criminal trials" could also take place.

"For a long time, European states have argued that they are not able to reveal any information because they have promised full confidentiality to the US," said Manfred Nowak, another former UN Special Rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism, after the Senate report was released in December. "Since these 500 pages have been released, this argument no longer holds true."

The UK faces allegations for participating in torture at Guantanamo

Britain, Macedonia, Berlin

The allegations of collusion leveled by Amnesty in its paper also refer to three other European nations: Great Britain, Macedonia, and Germany.

With reference to the Senate report, Amnesty called on Great Britain to disclose information regarding its role in the alleged torture of Guantanamo Bay detainee Binyam Mohamed. Although the Senate report made no mention of direct CIA detention, Amnesty also demanded that the British government address claims that it detained terror suspects in secret on the island territory of Diego Garcia, the site of a strategic US military and naval base in the Indian Ocean.

El-Masri won his case at the European
Court of Human Rights in 2012

Germany and Macedonia were implicated in the Amnesty paper and the Senate report in connection with the arrest and transfer of German citizen Khaled el-Masri, who was tortured at a black site in Afghanistan. The European Court of Human Rights has already found that Macedonia violated el-Masri's human rights by rendering him to the CIA, but the role that Germany played in that process remains unclear.

"What is missing is whether Germany had any involvement," said Scheinin. "And that is what [Amnesty] is ultimately asking for. Even if there was an investigation in Germany, Amnesty's grievance is that the government didn't cooperate fully."

Related Article:

GOP lawmaker: You will ‘rethink everything’ when full 9/11 report is released

Lithuanian finance minister: 'We need the euro'

Lithuania is to become the eurozone's 19th member, but only half of Lithuanians are in favor of the new currency. That will change, Finance Minister Rimantas Sadzius told DW.

Deutsche Welle, 31 Dec 2014

Why are you introducing the euro now, given that the whole world is talking about the debt and economic crises in the euro area?

People have been talking about the euro crisis for quite a long time and during all that time, the eurzone proved that it is resilient to external shocks, to internal tensions and strains. I think the eurozone has achieved a state where it can cope with the crisis by itself.

Regarding Lithuania, we've had a currency peg to the euro since 2002. We've undergone all the challenges that the eurozone has had - internal devaluation, salary cuts, social benefits cuts during the financial crisis in real terms. But we can't yet use the benefits of the eurozone.

We started using some, for example, lower interest rates for borrowing to finance our small budget deficit. But as of January 1, we will be at the table where decisions are taken about the eurozone, about monetary policy. For the investment climate it's also beneficial because we're removing any talk about any risks, any devaluation of our national currency, because we join the eurozone with the same rate that we fixed the litas to the euro at in 2002.

The exchange rate has been fixed for some time, as you say. What will change for Lithuanians apart from the notes and coins in their wallets?

They will not have to pay exchange fees and we'll have lower interest rates for borrowing, not just for the state, but also for private firms and individuals. For investors - and we need investors from abroad - they always calculated the return on investment by including risk premiums. Now the risk of the devaluation of the currency is removed, so the return on investment could be higher.

The magic number for Lithuania is 3.4528. That's the official exchange rate - 3.45 litas for one euro. How long do you think people will think in litas?

The experience of other countries that joined the eurozone showed that people convert into their old currency for a long time, at least five years …Only half the population thinks that the changeover to euros is good. But we have the example of Estonia. It took two years for this number - half of the population - to increase to 85 percent, who are supporting the euro at the moment.

So, I think in two years, public support for the euro in Lithuania will be equally high.

Lithuania's euro coins feature the country's coat of arms, a knight on horseback

How can you prevent some businesses from using the introduction of the new currency for price hikes? In Germany, many people thought for a long time that prices had gone up across the board.

We monitor prices very carefully. What we see is higher prices in services. But that can be explained through pay rises of 4 to 5 percent annually. It's clearly not because of the euro.

Other prices are stable or even decreasing because of many international economic factors like cheaper fuel and food. I think there'll be no such effect. We also have very strict controls and there is also competition.

We shall see, but monitoring of prices will take place throughout 2015.

The litas was a very strong symbol, of independence when the communist system broke down at the beginning of the 1990s. Do you think people will have a problem with giving up that symbol?

Yes, there such emotions, we're an emotional people. After the war, the litas served even longer than pre-war litas - because the litas was restored from pre-war times - but one side of the euro coin is decorated with our coat of arms, which has been used for Lithuanian coins since the 14th century. That will now be seen everywhere in Europe and it shows our identity in Europe.

How do the crisis in Ukraine and the European sanctions against Russia influence your currency and economic policies?

We had to downgrade our economic outlook quite considerably. For next year, we expect just 0.9-percent growth. We see difficulty for our firms that are exporting goods to Russia. We had quite a significant flow of re-exports, the transit of goods, through Lithuania to Russia, which decreased as well.

But on the other hand, we see that like after the first Russian crisis in 1998, firms are able to find new markets. They go West and euro adoption is a very favorable factor for them to look better for European markets.

Rimants Sadzius is a 54-year-old Social Democrat. He has been Lithuania's finance minister since 2012 as well as from 2007 to 2008. He studied chemistry and law.

The adoption of the euro in Lithuania had long looked unlikely because of high inflation, which Sadzius managed to bring down. Neighbors Estonia and Latvia introduced the euro in 2010 and 2014 respectively.

In the last 100 years, Lithuania has had several different currencies, including East Germany's Ostmark, the Soviet ruble, the Russian ruble, the litas and the talonas. In 1993, the litas was re-introduced. In 2002, it was pegged to the euro.

Interview conducted by Bernd Riegert

No permanent NATO troop presence in Eastern Europe, Merkel says

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has ruled out permanently stationing NATO troops in Eastern Europe. She said that the alliance will defend the Baltic states, while upholding its treaty obligations with Russia.

Deutsche Welle, 3 Sep 2014

Speaking at a news conference on Wednesday, Chancellor Merkel said that Russia would likely respect the territorial integrity of the three Baltic countries, but acknowledged that NATO still had to take some measures to reassure its eastern member states.

"When it comes to the question of the defense of the Baltic countries, I assume that the territorial integrity of these countries will be preserved," Merkel said, discussing Moscow's intentions in the region.

The three Baltic states Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania - former Soviet republics that are now NATO members - have observed the Ukraine crisis with growing concern for their own safety.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed the right to intervene to defend the rights of Russian speakers. All three countries have significant Russian-speaking minorities.

"We will adopt a series of measures at the NATO summit that will improve the ability of NATO to react quickly in this region, while respecting the NATO-Russia act," Merkel said.

Signed in 1997, the NATO-Russia Founding Act prohibits the Western alliance from basing large number of troops in Eastern Europe, where the former Soviet Union reigned supreme during the Cold War.

Merkel's comments come as US President Barack Obama visited Estonia, where he reassured Tallinn of Washington's commitment to the country's security.

Two-tier alliance?

The Western alliance is searching for a way to reassure its eastern members without provoking the Kremlin. NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has proposed creating a rapid reaction force of up to 5,000 troops and pre-positioning ammunition, fuel and other military supplies in Eastern Europe.

But on Tuesday, Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves said that the alliance should establish permanent bases in his country.

"We should not have NATO with two-tier countries, with NATO permanent bases and without," Hendrik said during a trip to Oslo. "This is a wrong signal to send to the potential aggressor."

Non-lethal supplies to Ukraine

In addition, Germany has moved to send non-lethal supplies to the Ukrainian military, which is battling pro-Russian separatists in its eastern regions. The supplies would include bulletproof vests, field hospitals and other medical equipment.

NATO meets in Newport, Wales on Thursday, where the alliance is expected to adopt a more concrete plan to defend its eastern member states.

Although Ukraine is not a NATO member, President Petro Poroshenko will also attend the summit. Kyiv, officially a non-aligned country, has publicly stated that it would like to join the Western alliance.

slk/sb (AFP, dpa, Reuters)

Obama arrives in Estonia to reassure Baltic leaders

US President Barack Obama has touched down in Estonia. He is due to hold talks with Baltic leaders as NATO prepares to bolster its military presence in Eastern Europe amid the Ukraine crisis.

Deutsche Welle, 3 Sep 2014

Obama landed in the Estonian capital, Tallinn, early on Wednesday aboard Air Force One. He is due to meet Baltic leaders, in what is a symbolic show of solidarity with Eastern Europe while emphasizing Washington's commitment to the security of the Baltic states.

It comes a day ahead of a NATO summit in Newport, Wales, in which Obama and Western allies will approve plans to position at least 4,000 troops and military equipment in the region. That plan is an attempt to calm growing insecurity particularly among Baltic states, nervous about the Russian-backed military intervention in eastern Ukraine.

While Ukraine is not a part of NATO, alliance members in Eastern and Central Europe fear they could be Moscow's next targets, prompting the 28-nation bloc to come up with a more robust response.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has claimed the right to intervene on behalf of Russian speakers if Moscow believes their rights are under threat. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania - all former Soviet republics that are now NATO members - have significant Russian minorities.

In 1997, NATO and Russia signed an agreement in which the Western alliance agreed to not permanently station a substantial number of combat troops in Eastern Europe. On Tuesday, Moscow warned NATO against establishing a permanent presence near Russia's borders, saying it would view such a move as a threat.

"The fact that the military infrastructure of NATO member states is getting closer to our borders, including via enlargement, will preserve its place as one of the external threats for the Russian Federation," Mikhail Popov, deputy director of Russia's national security council, told the RIA Novosti news agency.

Ukraine officials say their army is locked not only in a conflict with pro-Russian separatists, but also with the Russian military. Unverified reports on Tuesday said that Russian military forces had been spotted in two major rebel-held cities in eastern Ukraine.

Putin has denied that his forces are invading Ukraine.

jr/jm (AFP, AP)

The Baltic States: From Soviet to European

A quarter of a century ago the world watched on in fascination as people from the Baltic States formed a giant human chain to demonstrate for their freedom. They have come a long way since.

Deutsche Welle, 23 Aug 2014

August 23, 1989 will forever be the day when two million Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians joined hands to form a 600-kilometer cross-border human chain. United in spirit, they used the 50th anniversary of the Soviet-Nazi pact that had tethered them to Moscow for so long, to sing for their liberty.

Although the Soviet authorities banned the mass-scale protest, dubbed the "Baltic Way," defiance took hold, and some two million people turned out to join the movement. It was a defining moment along the region's road to its 1991 independence.

Norbert Beckmann-Dierkes, head of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation's Latvia and Lithuania office says the demonstration was a key moment in the history of the region. "It made people understand the possibility of using peaceful means, courage and commitment to tackle the dominant political force to affect change.”

And from then on, things moved quickly. The former Soviet republics committed to political and economic structural reforms, and not long after independence, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania had become members of NATO and the EU.

Back in the European fold

Riga in Latvia is European capital
of culture for 2014

Beckmann-Dierkes says the Baltic states have come a long way in the past 25 years and now boast stable political systems, a commitment to democracy, freedom of speech, assembly and press. "They are back at the heart of Europe."

Raivo Vare, Minister of State in the first government following Estonian independence and Minister of Transport and Communications in subsequent cabinets, told DW that the Baltic's return to the European fold happened "faster than imagined."

So how, when other former Soviet republic such as Ukraine are quite literally fighting to find a way into Europe, did the Baltic states become such a success story? Vare believes the answer is embedded in the history of the region.

"We only endured the Soviet regime for 50 years, and some of those who remembered life before the USSR were still alive," he said.

Not without turmoil

That said, the transition to Europe was not without its violent moments. Vare recalls the night of the January 12, 1991 when Soviet troops stormed a Lithuanian television tower. Eleven people who stood in the path of Soviet tanks lost their lives.

The streets might be old, but the Estonian
 capital, Tallinn, has come a long way since
Soviet rule

These days, the Baltic nations cut fine political and economic figures, which Beckmann-Dierkes attributes to a healthy Baltic attitude. "They had to accept certain cuts, but they had a 'we-can-do-it' attitude, and that has paid off," he said, citing stable growing economies and imminent entry into the eurozone.

Raivo Vare believes the region's economic success is related to the implementation of radical reforms and a determination to succeed. "We want a faster rate of economic growth to put us on a par with our Scandinavian neighbors."

Fear of Russia

But not everything is perfect. Relations with Russia for one thing. Besides energy dependence, some regard Russian speaking minorities in the Baltic states as reason for concern.

Vare says not enough has been done to include minorities in Baltic societies. "On the one hand you have the Eurorussians, predominantly younger people who are largely integrated," he said. "But on the other hand, older people are still influenced by Russia and Russian state media."

But Beckmann-Dierkes warns against turning the problem into something it is not. "I have not yet met anyone from the Russian-speaking minority who says they desperately want to go back to Russia," he said. "On the contrary, they understand the value of the freedom and legal security offered by the European Union."