PrairiePundit

 The Hill: Pressure is mounting on the European Union to abandon Russian gas supplies as individual countries begin turning off the tap. The Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia became Europe’s first region to abandon Russian gas supplies entirely this weekend, and they urged other nations on the continent to do the same. Lithuania, the first individual EU nation to make the move, declared on Saturday that the country was acting “in response to Russia’s energy blackmail in Europe,” according to a news release from the country’s Energy Ministry . But whether this leads to other countries in Europe abandoning Russia’s gas is a big question. German Finance Minister Christian Lindner on Sunday said Russia’s crimes could not go unanswered, but on Monday argued a full-scale embargo would hurt Germany more than Russia. “We must plan tough sanctions, but gas cannot be substituted in the short term,” Lindner told reporters before meeting with the Eurogroup, the informal body of ...

Sunday Telegraph: Fred Kagan, the intellectual author of the successful US "troop surge" plan in Iraq, believes Nato's presence in the Baltics must be massively strengthened to pre-empt the risk of them being invaded in the same way as Georgia. Such measures would infuriate Moscow, which last week warned that the installation of a US missile defence shield in Poland would ignite a new "arms race" between East and West. But Mr Kagan, an expert on the Russian military who has the ear of hawks within the US administration, said that the West needed to match words with deeds if it was to stop Russia turning into an "intolerable, aggressive imperialistic" power. "We need to help these countries develop sophisticated air defence and anti-tank capabilities that don't pose any offensive threat to Russia, but promise the possibility of very high casualties were they to attempt what they did in Georgia," said...