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Meanwhile In The Baltic Republics And Poland...


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Russian propaganda will naturally seize on such incidents, but they don't need to provoke them when they always can make some up. There have been fake news about German soldiers raping a local girl or plowing through a Jewish cemetery with tanks in Lithuania before, after all. 

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I had to google that. I'm reminded of the olive tree story Ken Estes related of his 70s Med cruise at the Seattle I&I. 😄

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Oops! Paratroopers raid Bulgarian olive oil factory by mistake

Todd South

Soldiers with the 173rd Airborne Brigade mistakenly seized and secured a working olive oil factory in Bulgaria as part of a large-scale NATO exercise aimed at deterring Russian military aggression in eastern Europe.

“On May 11, soldiers entered and cleared a building next to the airfield that they believed was part of the training area, but that was occupied by Bulgarian civilians operating a private business,” according to a U.S. Army Europe and Africa statement released today. “No weapons were fired at any time during this interaction.”

Officials said that during the exercise, soldiers simulated entering and clearing multiple bunkers and structures across the decommissioned Cheshnegirovo airfield in Bulgaria.

The statement said the Army would “implement rigorous procedures to clearly define our training areas and prevent this type of incident in the future.”

“We sincerely apologize to the business and its employees,” officials wrote. “We always learn from these exercises and are fully investigating the cause of this mistake.”

[...] 

https://www.armytimes.com/news/your-army/2021/06/01/oops-paratroopers-raid-bulgarian-olive-oil-factory-by-mistake/

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Seems the incidents in Lithuania didn't all happen at that rowdy party which caused hotel staff to call German MP and unraveled a history of other events in the platoon; an Afghan-descended soldier being insulted over his ethnicity, a female one over her gender to the point someone scratched "whore" into her rifle, and what probably broke the camel's back, some troops singing a song for Hitler's birthday against expressive orders of an NCO, who however didn't take any action. A panopticum of leadership problems. The whole platoon is being sent home now. 

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On 6/16/2021 at 7:46 AM, BansheeOne said:

Seems the incidents in Lithuania didn't all happen at that rowdy party which caused hotel staff to call German MP and unraveled a history of other events in the platoon; an Afghan-descended soldier being insulted over his ethnicity, a female one over her gender to the point someone scratched "whore" into her rifle, and what probably broke the camel's back, some troops singing a song for Hitler's birthday against expressive orders of an NCO, who however didn't take any action. A panopticum of leadership problems. The whole platoon is being sent home now. 

Ugh.  Hopefully it can be dealt with without a whole platoon being punished.

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The platoon is being disbanded and re-established with new personnel. Which doesn't mean everyone's being punished; two soldiers have already been discharged, and five more suspended from duty. A total of six investigations have also been handed over to the civilian court system, which means there are charges under general criminal code (there is no separate military criminal court system in the Bundeswehr). 

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Lithuania: Fighter jet alert halts Spanish PM news conference

By Amanda Rivkin | 1h ago

A Russian plane triggered an urgent alert disrupting a press conference of the Lithuanian and Spanish presidents.

Pilots scrambled a Eurofighter jet at Siauliai air force base in LithuaniaThursday in response to an unidentified Russian plane.

The alert interrupted a joint news conference the president, Gitanas Nauseda, was holding with Spanish President Pedro Sanchez.

They were three minutes into the press conference in front of the plane's fuselage and in the middle of a "joint declaration" when a chaotic scene unfolded behind them during a live broadcast. 

Spanish newspaper El Pais tweeted dramatic footage of the disruption.

The pilots were responding to a Russian plane flying from the exclave of Kaliningrad that had not filed a flight plan. 

Nauseda briefly continued before both he and Sanchez were led to the side as podiums, flags and members of the media were cleared out of the way of the Eurofighter jet.

[...] 

https://m.dw.com/en/lithuania-fighter-jet-alert-halts-spanish-pm-news-conference/a-58201420

 

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Could also be in the Belarus thread. But at any rate I doubt that Lithuania is going to make Belarus pay for the wall/fence they're building. 😁 

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Lithuanian FM: Belarus using refugees as 'hybrid weapon against EU'

By Jon Shelton | 15h ago

Gabrielius Landsbergis tells DW that Minsk is shuttling refugees from Iraq to Lithuania to exact revenge for sanctions. He warned that the EU could see "waves of refugees" if the practice is not stopped.

Lithuania's Gabrielius Landsbergis, in Brussels for a meeting of EU foreign ministers, told DW that Belarus was using refugees from war-torn countries as "human shields" in an attempt to force the European Union to ease sanctions.

"This is a hybrid weapon being used against the European Union" to force the bloc to change policy towards Belarus.

Landsbergis claims that his country has "concrete evidence of Belarusian border guards who facilitate the travel of groups of refugees or even try to disguise their foot prints on the ground."

The foreign minister's warning comes days after Vilnius declared a state of emergency over the issue and began construction on a 550-kilometer (320-mile) razor-wire fence to cope with the rush of new arrivals. 

Authorities in Vilnius also said on Monday that they would open a new camp to house some 500 migrants in response to the new arrivals.  

Vilnius claims Minsk actively facilitating travel from Iraq to EU

Lithuania says most of the people arriving at its border are from Iraq, accusing Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko of orchestrating the crisis, for instance, by facilitating direct flights from Baghdad to Minsk.

More than 1,600 migrants have illegally entered Lithuania from Belarus this year — 20 times the number of people who arrived in all of 2020. More than 1,000 of those arrivals have occurred over the past two weeks, according to Lithuania's border guard service. 

[...] 

https://m.dw.com/en/lithuanian-fm-belarus-using-refugees-as-hybrid-weapon-against-eu/a-58245160

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On 7/13/2021 at 12:23 PM, BansheeOne said:

Could also be in the Belarus thread. But at any rate I doubt that Lithuania is going to make Belarus pay for the wall/fence they're building. 😁 

https://m.dw.com/en/lithuanian-fm-belarus-using-refugees-as-hybrid-weapon-against-eu/a-58245160

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Latvia and Lithuania act to counter migrants crossing Belarus border

Along with Poland, the two Baltic states accuse Alexander Lukashenko of ‘hybrid warfare’

Jon Henley, Andrew Roth in Moscow and Jennifer Rankin in Brussels

Tue 10 Aug 2021 11.39 EDT

Latvia has declared a state of emergency and Lithuania is mulling a razor-wire fence to stop record numbers of migrants crossing their borders from Belarus, amid claims Minsk is using the arrivals as leverage on EU states to reverse sanctions.

Authorities in the two Baltic states and Poland have faced increases in illegal migration so severe they have appealed to Brussels for help, accusing the Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, of orchestrating the crossings in a form of “hybrid warfare”.

Vilnius, Riga and Warsaw believe Lukashenko is using the migrants, mainly from Iraq, to pressure the bloc into lifting sanctions imposed over his ferocious crackdown on opponents after last year’s disputed elections, widely seen as rigged.

Tensions between the three and Belarus’s autocratic leader are already high, with Lithuania hosting many of Lukashenko’s pro-democratic rivals while Poland has given refuge to the Belarusian Olympic athlete Krystsina Tsimanouskaya.

During an eight-and-a-half-hour press conference on Monday, Lukashenko denied Belarus was “blackmailing” Europe with a migrant crisis, but said it was reacting to foreign pressure “according to its capabilities.”

“We are not blackmailing anyone with illegal immigration,” he told journalists in Minsk’s Independence Palace. “We’re not threatening anyone. But you have put us in such circumstances that we are forced to react. And we’re reacting.”

EU pressure last week persuaded Iraq, which in early August added direct daily routes from Sulaymaniyah and Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan as well as Basra, to pause flights to Belarus, sharply reducing the number of migrants arriving in Lithuania.

But flight records showed one Iraqi Airways flight from Baghdad landed in Minsk on Tuesday, and the fall in Lithuanian arrivals has been offset by an exponential increase in migrants from Belarus crossing into Latvia and Poland.

There is little doubt Belarusian officials have been involved in the scheme. Lithuania has published video shot by Frontex, the EU border agency, showing vehicles likely used by the Belarusian border guard escorting migrants to the border with the EU.

One leaked video showed migrants being released from a van near the border and told, first in Russian and then in English, which direction to walk. Another showed Belarusian riot police in helmets telling a group of people, many carrying heavy bags, to “walk” toward the EU border.

While no direct flights currently operate from Kabul or other Afghan cities, observers now suspect Belarus will try to bring in more refugees from Afghanistan. Lukashenko last week also told officials to tighten the country’s border, effectively trapping the migrants in a no-man’s land once they’re turned back from the EU.

Arrivals in Lithuania have slowed dramatically following EU pressure on Iraq, with 271 migrants crossing the border from Belarus last week compared with 1,106 the previous week. But the country must now process 4,110 irregular migrants, from Iraq, Congo-Brazzaville, Cameroon, Syria, Iran and Russia, 50 times the 2020 total.

MPs in the Baltic state on Tuesday debated whether to build a 4-metre-high metal fence topped with razor wire along about 315 miles (508km) of its 420-mile border with Belarus, as well as allowing the army to patrol the border. Border guards last week pushed about 700 people back into Belarus, allowing only women with children to stay.

“Lukashenko is using migration as a weapon,” the Lithuanian president, Gitanas Nausėda, said over the weekend. “This is a hybrid campaign by Lukashenko against the EU and the integrity of its eastern border.”

The Belarusian leader is not the first to be accused of using migrants to pressure the EU. Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has previously been open in demanding cash to prevent tens of thousands of refugees trying to reach Europe.

After a fivefold week-on-week increase in arrivals, the Latvian government on Tuesday declared a state of emergency lasting until 10 November in its border areas, allowing the army, police and border guards to order illegal migrants to return to the country they came from, using force if necessary.

Latvia has detained 283 individuals for illegally crossing from Belarus since 6 August, authorities said, bringing the total for the year to 343. The state border guard chief, Guntis Pujāts, said 65 had been detained on Monday night alone, arriving “in large groups, in an organised flow”.

Poland, meanwhile, recorded 491 asylum seekers from Belarus in the first week of August, nine times more than the previous week, after it gave refuge to Tsimanouskaya, who refused to return home from the Tokyo Games.

Authorities said on Monday they had detained 349 migrants crossing from Belarus since Friday. The Polish border guard said the detained migrants were mostly from Iraq and Afghanistan, adding that 871 illegal immigrants had been detained on the Belarus border so far this year, compared to 122 in the whole of last year.

[...] 

On Monday, Lukashenko also hinted at other hybrid weapons he could unleash on Europe, in particular threatening to cut off cooperation with the US on fighting smuggling of radioactive materials.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/10/latvia-and-lithuania-act-to-counter-migrants-crossing-belarus-border

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Belarus guards crossing border to push migrants into Lithuania, claims Vilnius

By Euronews   •   18/08/2021 - 13:42

Lithuania has accused Belarusian border guards of illegally crossing the border to push a group of migrants into Lithuanian territory.

The interior ministry said a dozen guards had forced 35 migrants to cross into Lithuania's southeast Šalčininkai District, south of the capital Vilnius.

 

A video of the alleged incident near the village of Dieveniskes was published on social media by the Lithuania's border protection service.

The footage purports to show a number of guards, armed with shields, standing behind a group of people as they make their way through high grass.

Lithuania says it is "not the first incident of its kind" at the border with Belarus in recent days, and claims that Belarusian border guards withdrew to their country's territory after repeated warnings.

"We cannot tolerate this bold provocation of twelve Belarusian officials crossing the border of the Republic of Lithuania today," said Interior Minister Agnė Bilotaitė said in a statement.

"We have immediately responded to the provocation and have made a decision to further increase the border protection capacity," Bilotaitė added.

Lithuania said they had launched an investigation into the incident and had informed Belarus' State Border Committee.

The European Union has accused Belarus of deliberately facilitating the migration of Iraqi refugees into Lithuania and the bloc, in retaliation against sanctions imposed on Minsk.

Belarus’s border committee has also released a video of the incident from its side of the border, which does not show the officers in riot gear.

"Lithuanian security forces use physical force to try to push the refugees into the territory of the Republic of Belarus," it stated.

"Lithuanian border guards deliberately ignore all requests for asylum," the statement added.

The incident comes as EU interior ministers are due to meet in Brussels to discuss further action on the migration issue.

[...]

https://www.euronews.com/2021/08/18/belarus-guards-crossing-border-to-push-migrants-into-lithuania-claims-vilnius

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2 hours ago, BansheeOne said:

Meh, unless they start using force to allow entry as the favored country of Ms Merkel did a year ago, this is nothing.  

Lithuanians did ask the Greeks on how to handle the situation but borders are quite different.  Anyway, both countries would be best to invest on those signs from WW2 with how many kms to Berlin and any other capital of western Europe.  It would be cheaper and way more effective, just plant them at the border and close their eyes.

Rest of EU seems to do just that with their plight.

 

Edited by Mistral
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September 2, 2021

7:23 PM CEST

Last Updated 2 days ago

Poland declares state of emergency on Belarus border amid migrant surge

Reuters

WARSAW, Sept 2 (Reuters) - Poland declared a state of emergency in two regions bordering Belarus on Thursday following a surge of illegal migration that Warsaw has blamed on its neighbour.

Poland and the European Union have accused Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko of encouraging hundreds of migrants to cross into Polish territory to put pressure on the bloc over sanctions it has imposed on Minsk.

The emergency order - the first of its kind in Poland since communist times - banned mass gatherings and limited people's movements in a 3-km (2-mile) deep strip of land along the frontier for 30 days, the government said.

Aid groups working with migrants said there had already been an increase in Polish police and armoured vehicles in the area in recent days, and that they were worried the order would limit their work and leave refugees stranded.

"The atmosphere is generally violent, there are uniformed, armed servicemen everywhere...it reminds me of war," Marta Anna Kurzyniec, a resident of the Polish border town of Krynki, told Reuters

Poland began building a barbed wire fence last week to curb the flow of migrants from countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan.

The EU imposed economic sanctions on Belarus following a disputed election in August 2020 and a crackdown on the opposition, and says Lukashenko has deliberately encouraged migrants to cross into Poland, Latvia and Lithuania in retaliation.

Belarus' Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei on Thursday blamed "Western politicians" for the situation on the borders, Belarusian state news agency Belta reported.

"Belarus has always honored all the provisions of our agreements to the letter," Makei told a news conference.

[...]

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/polish-president-imposes-state-emergency-belarus-border-2021-09-02/

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Just to give an update on naval developments in Estonia.

 

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FORCIT AND DA-GROUP PROVIDE NAVAL MINE SYSTEMS TO ESTONIA
27.9.2021
Estonian Navy has procured Forcit BLOCKER sea mines, installed with target detection devices and supporting development, testing and maintenance systems developed by DA-Group. This technology combination from the Finnish companies Forcit and DA-Group ensures the most modern naval minelaying competence and safe operational concept for the extreme conditions of Baltic Sea. This innovative naval minelaying capability offers a safe, secure and affordable method for protecting sea lines of communication, maritime anti-access and area denial for territorial waters.

BLOCKER is a modern influence sea mine with devastating performance – the warhead contains fully IM compliant explosives equivalent to over 1000 kg of TNT. It is a cost-effective underwater weapon with long shelf life and minimal maintenance during the life cycle. Its DA-Group developed, world leading multisensor target detection system is extremely precise and can identify targets with exceptional accuracy. The operator has a wide selection of different kind of parameters and settings to select from to support various mission setups and diverse threat and target scenarios.

ATLAS Elektronik, a maritime high-technology enterprise with German roots will provide the minelaying planning and execution system.

Mines themselves: https://forcitdefence.com/app/uploads/sites/18/2020/09/forcit-blocker-brochure-folded-A3-email-15052020.pdf

Also we are buying Blue Spear (5G SSM) land based anti-ship missiles from Israeli-Singaporen joint venture with some local Estonian companies also involved.

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Proteus Advanced Systems has signed a contract to equip the Estonian Defence Forces (EDF) with Blue Spear (5G SSM) land-to-sea missile systems.

The contract has been signed with Estonian Centre for Defence Investment (ECDI) and follows a competitive tender bid process.

Proteus is a joint venture (JV) between Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) and ST Engineering Land Systems.

The advanced precision anti-ship missile systems will strengthen Estonian coastal defence capabilities.

Estonia Defence Minister Kalle Laanet said: “This weapon system substantially improves our coastal defence and sends a clear message that we are contributing to the regional and collective defence effort.

“This is one of the most complex and high-tech weapon systems of all time and a huge leap forward for the Estonian Defence Forces.”

With a maximum range of 290km, the Blue Spear system can be launched from different kinds of land-based platforms with high sub-sonic speed flight.

It can operate in all weather conditions and during day and night. It has beyond the line of sight (BLOS) strike capabilities that enable it to accurately target sea-based mobile and stationary threats.

Blue Spear is a variation/development of Israerli Gabriel family missiles, which includes PTO2020 (Gabriel V) as  bought by Finland  in 2018 and Sea Serpent currently proposed to UK (IAI+Thales cooperation) as but what are the differences between these versions  are unclear.

 

 

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On 10/7/2021 at 3:49 PM, carrierlost said:

 

Blue Spear is a variation/development of Israerli Gabriel family missiles, which includes PTO2020 (Gabriel V) as  bought by Finland  in 2018 and Sea Serpent currently proposed to UK (IAI+Thales cooperation) as but what are the differences between these versions  are unclear.

 

One difference is that Blue Spear is AFAIK supersonic, Gabriel V is subsonic. I suspect Sea Serpent being supersonic too.

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Poland plans to bolster military amid threats from Belarus, Russia

7h ago

The Polish military has announced plans to more than double its troop numbers, as the country faces security and migration challenges on its eastern border.

The Polish government revealed a homeland defense bill on Tuesday, which could see a massive boost to the country's military.

The leader of the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS), Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who is also deputy prime minister, said the bill comes as a response to current global trends and Poland's political geography.

Speaking at a news conference in Warsaw, Kaczynski cited "Russia's imperial ambitions" and the migrant challenge on its eastern border with Belarus as top security challenges.

"If we want to avoid the worst, that is war, we have to act according to the old rule: 'If you want peace, prepare for war,'"Kaczynski said. 

What does the defense plan entail?

Both Kaczynski and Polish Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak jointly presented the defense proposal.

Troop numbers would more than double from the current number of 110,000 to 250,000 soldiers, along with 50,000 reserve troops.

Kaczynski said the plan entails purchasing military equipment produced in the US and elsewhere in the EU. 

The boost in troop numbers would not require a return to compulsory national service, the officials said. 

Blaszczak said that an Armed Forces Support Fund would be started to support the plan, with funding coming by way of government secured-bonds.

While no exact figures were given, officials said funding would work out to be significantly more than the 2% of gross domestic product, which is the benchmark for defense spending by NATO member states.

The proposed bill stills need to be signed off by parliament and the country's president.

https://m.dw.com/en/poland-plans-to-bolster-military-amid-threats-from-belarus-russia/a-59634280

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