airBaltic is launching four new flights to destinations in Barents Region making Riga the new hub for interconnecting flights between east and west in the north.

A visa-free system between Finland and Russia would have implications for the whole of the European Union, and the question will of course be a specifically EU issue, says Finland’s Foreign Minister Alexander Stubb.

Finnish President Tarja Halonen will next week meet with Russian Prime Minister Putin in St Petersburg.

The Finnish Border Guard confirms that it in 2009 prevented 3,200 attempts of illegal immigration, practically all of them from Russia.

Trade between Russia and its Nordic neighbors in 2009 dropped dramatically, figures from the Russian Customs Service show.

A new study, evaluating the prospects of an Arctic railway from Rovaniemi in northern Finland to the North-Norway coastal town of Kirkenes, shows a large potential. The estimates conclude that there could be a market for up to 40 daily trains from Finland to the Barents Sea coast.

Is there a Barents identity? That is one of the questions asked in the exhibition Pan Barentz, now on display in Moscow.

The EU foreign minister meeting in Lapland this weekend was a turning point in the construction of a new union foreign policy, EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Catherine Ashton says.

More than 3000 people participated in this year’s Barents Friendship Skiing Race, which crosses the borders between Russia, Finland and Norway.

The Foreign Ministers of the Nordic Countries will meet in Copenhagen on Thursday to discuss joint foreign- and security cooperation.