Circle the area on this map
D. Before it collapsed in 1991, the Russian dominated Soviet Union led a military alliance with seven of its “satellite states” including Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia. Czechoslovakia peacefully separated to become the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Bulgaria and the Czech Republic later joined European Union (EU) and the NATO military alliance led by the U.S.
A. Sergei Skripal is a former Russian spy who worked as a double agent for the British. He and his daughter were poisoned in Britain with the Russian-developed Novichok nerve agent. That is the believed to be the same poison used on the Bulgarian arms dealer in 2014 and Russian dissident Alexei Navalny in Siberia last year.
C. Russia is the internationally recognized successor state to the Soviet Union. Fourteen other nations declared independence – Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.
B. The three nations on the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea have joined NATO as have all of the “satellite states” which were once Soviet allies. But, Russian President and former Soviet spy Vladimir Putin has warned that allowing Ukraine and Georgia to join NATO would be considered “a direct threat” to his country. Putin called the Baltic states “openly hostile” to Russia.