Baltic Sea

July 1, 2025, marks two years since the first conscripts began their 11-month service under Latvia’s renewed conscription system, known as the National Defence Service. Contrary to what Latvia’s Ministry of Defence claimed back in 2017, the return of...

  Ben Gardner-Gill: Hello, and welcome to Baltic Ways. I’m your co-host, Ben Gardner-Gill. Today we’re talking with Gražina Belousova. Gražina is a feminist scholar of race, religion, and gender in post-Soviet Europe. She earned her PhD from Duke...

The Baltic States have consistently recognized the threat Russia posed to their sovereignty, and now, with Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Baltic region finds itself at the forefront but with a different set of challenges and regional dynamics....

Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, I have encountered questions asking why Ukraine has not ended the war. Those asking believe that ending the war at any cost would benefit Ukraine. However, such a scenario would not be fair...

One of Taiwan’s most significant foreign policy achievements since the COVID-19 pandemic was the expansion of its unofficial diplomatic cooperation with Lithuania. Both countries opened unofficial representative offices in each other’s capitals—in 2021, Taiwan’s office opened in Vilnius, and...

It is well known that the three Baltic States, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, are distinct yet share many similarities. They are comparable in size and have similar social, political, and economic development. They are situated in similar geostrategic positions...

In an era marked by evolving geopolitical challenges and the imperative for robust defense capabilities along NATO’s Eastern Flank, the strategic partnership between the United States and Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia emerges as a beacon of collaborative security and...

Ten years ago in 2014, Baltic defense was paltry. The defense budgets of the three Baltic states, but especially Latvia and Lithuania, were suffering from the financial crisis of 2008, and their armies were all negligible. Baltic defense was...

The title of this essay would have been a little bit different if I had spent five more days in Odesa as planned. “50 days in Ukraine, 1,005 days in war.” That would be a neat summary of my...

Significant and, arguably, profound changes took place in Baltic high politics over the past four years. The peak pandemic years — 2020 and 2021 — proved quite pivotal for both Lithuania and Estonia, as both saw the emergence of...