on security, and through the prism of the baltic states. as former members of the soviet union, lithuania, estonia and latvia have been sounding the alarm about the existential threat they face from russia ever since theyjoined the nato alliance two decades ago. this year, they have been the loudest voices within the european union urging allies to go further and faster, raising the alarm about the kremlin s real intentions. this past week, the russians removed buoys that were marking the border with estonia on the narva river. the russian defence ministry briefly published a plan to revise its maritime border in the baltic sea, which was then quickly deleted, the kind of tactics that put all three countries on edge. the baltic states see two possibilities on the horizon. the first, if russia were to succeed in ukraine, is that they would try to exploit a weakened west. perhaps a surprise attack in the baltic states, followed up with a credible nuclear threat. the second scen
Sachin Tendulkar is one of the greatest batsmen of all time, no doubt about it! But do you know he even got the top spot in Wisden’s list this year?In a nutshell, Russia's involvement in the Ukraine war stems from a complex interplay of historical, geostrategic, political, and economic factors. From Crimea's disputed status to
Now it s by no means clear that he can do that at this stage, although the kremlin does tend to present victories if they want to, it may not be something that is based on any kind of reality in ukraine. but there is now a lot of chatter around whether vladimir putin might use the occasion to actually officially declare war on his neighbour. remember that, thus far, he has only told russians that this is a special military operation designed to come to the rescue of russian speaking populations in eastern ukraine. the other rumour doing the rounds here is that he might begin the mobilisation of reservists, and potentially civilians, to replenish depleted russian troops. now, this morning his spokesman dismissed both of those unconfirmed reports as nonsense. but, you know, we have seen the kremlin in the past say one thing and do another and that s why as the intensification for rehearsals is ongoing across this country,
Be able to take the capital overnight and that hasn t happened. well, we have had a briefing from the defence ministry here overnight and they don t talk about kyiv particularly, they say they have made some gains, captured a couple of southern cities, they claim and they talk very specifically about fighting going on in the east of the country. remember, moscow casts this invasion, not that you are allowed to call it an invasion, a war or an attack if you are russian media, they cast this invasion is a necessary rescue, if you like, of the russian speaking populations in eastern ukraine against what they would describe as the aggression from the ukrainian government. so we heard a lot about fighting in eastern ukraine, accusations that ukrainian forces have been targeting residential areas, ukrainian forces have been targeting residentialareas, injuring civilians, while we are hearing from the ukrainians that actually the reverse is happening and it is russian troops who are causing
Going on. it s a difficult venue for ukraine because belarus is very much part of this war as we happen reporting in the weeks running up to this invasion, there were military exercises, marshalling of forces on the belarusian ukraine border and then of course there had been reports in the last 2a hours that belarusian troops could actually cross the border to join the russian offensive. is there any indication where you are how likely that is? no, not really, i m afraid. the kremlin is very keen to perpetuate the narrative that this is not an invasion of ukraine, this is not a war, the russian media are not even allowed to use those words, the narrative here is this is a necessary defence of the russian speaking populations in eastern