Poland’s Baltic neighbours are observing the Civic Platform administration’s foreign policy with unease. The days when Poland served as the region’s leader, while President Lech Kaczynski mobilized Intermarum to defend against Russia’s aggressive policies, are long gone. Komorowski officially joined in the construction of a new Russian security architecture in Merkel’s and Sarkozy’s presence on 7 February. The following day, Lithuania called for the withdrawal of Russia’s nuclear weapons from the Kaliningrad region, while Estonia signed a defence cooperation agreement with Sweden, the Polish Gazeta Polska paper wrote on 9 March. READ MORE

Nuclear power no solution. READ MORE

The leaders of Brazil, Russia, India and China are meeting in Sanya, South China, for the BRIC summit on Thursday. South Africa is also attending this meeting as it has been invited to join the emerging markets' group. READ MORE

TALLINN - Estonia’s transit industry continues to show double-digit growth in 2011. This is a very encouraging sign for the economy, and leads analysts to speculate that the transit sector would be a lucrative investment in the future. Estonia is uniquely positioned to capture a significant share of the transit market between Russia and Scandinavia, Western Europe and the Baltics. READ MORE

The emergence of the Customs Union of Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus has incited concern of the European Union. Within the EU program “Eastern Partnership” they declared about the establishment of free trade area with the EU, which may negatively influence the functioning of the CU and Common Economic Space (CES) establishment. READ MORE

A couple of weeks ago, Kyrgyzstan's president, Roza Otunbayeva, announced that the country was planning to construct two counterterror training centers in the southern part of the country, and that one would be built by Russia and the other by the U.S. Her announcement raised a lot of questions, which I posed to Alisher Khamidov, a EurasiaNet contributor and expert on southern Kyrgyzstan. He said that fears of Islamist militants from Tajikistan as well as the military of Uzbekistan are motivating Kyrgyzstan to develop the centers, and that Otunbayeva puts a higher priority on the U.S. center than on the Russian one. READ MORE

Speaking about kazakh opposition, it is right to say: “there are no already other people, another are far away”. Following the tradition we'll talk about those who are far away. Among those, who are far away, perhaps the most prominent representative is Rahat Aliyev. READ MORE

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev will attend the Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) Annual Conference in China where he will address Russia's economic integration into the Asia Pacific region, a presidential aide said on Tuesday. READ MORE

Within the issue of Nagorny Karabakh we can observe “some space for the move forward”, and Georgia should be more brave and trust its partners, declared the during the interview to DELFI the OSCE Chairman-in-Office, the Head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania Audronius Ažubalis after his trip to Caucasus. With regret he noted that Russia and Georgia “retrench themselves seriously and for long”, and Belarus gets close to self-isolation “successfully”. READ MORE

Events in the Middle East are reverberating throughout the world, but no government is as committed to squashing domestic protests as is the leadership in Beijing. The government there has begun a crackdown against liberal voices in China. This seems to be a systematic effort that includes control of communications, beefing up internal security, arrest and prosecution of progressives, and even extralegal mechanisms. READ MORE