Lithuania

VILNIUS, Lithuania (AP) — U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin assured the three Baltic nations Saturday that they would not be on their own if faced with security threats from Russia, but he stopped short of promising a permanent deployment of American troops in the former Soviet republics.

Austin was in Lithuania as a massive Russian troop buildup and other actions have Western officials saying that Moscow could invade Ukraine at any time, although Russia has denied planning an invasion.

ANTAVILIAI, Lithuania, Jan 24 (Reuters) - A huge steel barn outside Lithuania's capital, whose long corridor and windowless rooms with carpets and soundproof doors once served as a CIA detention centre, will soon go on sale.

Washington's so-called "rendition programme", under which suspected Islamist militants from conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq were spirited to jails outside U.S. jurisdiction, remains shrouded in secrecy more than a decade after it ended.

VILNIUS, Jan 19 (Reuters) - A United Nations report into the forced diversion of a Ryanair (RYA.I) jetliner last year has found that a bomb threat that drew the plane to Minsk was "deliberately false" and that Belarus withheld crucial information from its fact-finding team.

The UN's International Civil Aviation Organization set up a specialist fact-finding team in May 2021, days after Belarus diverted the Vilnius-bound jet carrying a wanted opponent to Minsk following what it described as a bomb threat.

RUKLA, Lithuania Dec 19 (Reuters) - NATO will discuss Russia's security proposals but it will not let Moscow dictate the alliance's military posture, German Defence Minister Christine Lambrecht said on Sunday on a visit to German troops based in Lithuania to deter a Russian attack.

On Friday, Moscow set out a list of demands for the West that includes withdrawing NATO battalions from Poland and Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, once part of the Soviet Union.

VILNIUS, Nov 28 (Reuters) - Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda said on Sunday that the NATO military alliance needed to adjust its stance towards Belarus, whose military, he said, was becoming more integrated with Russian armed forces.

Nauseda told a news conference with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Vilnius that he was worried by the "total military integration" of Belarus into Russian military structures.

KAPCIAMIESTIS, Lithuania/WARSAW Nov 11 (Reuters) - Countries bordering Belarus on Thursday warned the migrant crisis on the European Union's eastern borders could escalate into a military confrontation while Ukraine said it would deploy thousands more troops to reinforce its frontier.

Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia said Belarus posed serious threats to European security by deliberately escalating its "hybrid attack" using migrants to retaliate for EU sanctions.

KAPCIAMIESTIS, Lithuania, Nov 9 (Reuters) - Lithuania's parliament on Tuesday declared a state of emergency at the country's border with Belarus and at camps hosting migrants who arrived from there, a tally of votes showed.

The state of emergency, which begins at midnight local time (2200 GMT) in the night of Tuesday to Wednesday and is to last a month, allows border guards to use "mental coercion" and "proportional physical violence" to prevent migrants from entering Lithuania.

VILNIUS, Lithuania (AP) — Lithuanian cybersecurity experts are urging the country’s government agencies to abandon the use of Chinese smartphone brands after an investigation identified security vulnerabilities and censorship concerns with certain devices.

Lithuania’s National Cyber Security Center said it found four major cybersecurity risks for devices made by Huawei and Xiaomi, including two relating to pre-installed apps and one involving personal data leakage, and warned against using these two brands.

VILNIUS, Aug 24 (Reuters) - Lithuania has proposed that the European Union sanction Belarusian citizens and companies which it says are helping migrants cross into EU member states, Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said on Tuesday.

Lithuania and neighbouring EU states Poland and Latvia have reported an increase in the number of migrants, many from Iraq and Afghanistan, trying to cross their borders from Belarus.

VILNIUS, Aug 18 (Reuters) - The European Union has a responsibility to accept Afghan refugees and cannot leave people who worked for the bloc in Afghanistan to "face revenge", European Parliament President David Sassoli said on Wednesday.

He said refugees arriving from Afghanistan, which is now in the hands of the Taliban, should be distributed evenly among EU member states.