Generolo Jono Žemaičio Lietuvos karo akademija

This paper critically analyses the escalating security challenges facing the European Union, primarily defined by the Russian Federation's military aggression against Ukraine after 2022 and the return of great power tensions. This transformation of the security environment has definitively ended the era of post-conflict peace on the European continent and exposed deep structural vulnerabilities in assuring sovereign European defence. The analysis identifies three key structural challenges: the critical fragmentation of Member States' defence capabilities and capacities, the limited ability to respond to high-intensity conflict, and the industrial unpreparedness of the European Defence Technological and Industrial Base. It is asserted that the EU’s persistent reliance on external guarantees, particularly amid rising transatlantic uncertainty, jeopardises its political sovereignty. To overcome these structural limitations, the paper advocates for a deeper integration trajectory towards the concept of a Total Defence Union. It posits that strengthening European defence is a strategic imperative for maintaining Europe's stability and international standing in an era of increasing great power rivalry.

This research tackles the challenge of precisely segmenting military and army objects within intricate visual environments that are influenced by factors such as camouflage, clutter, occlusions, and variations in lighting. A hybrid framework is introduced that merges Graph Cut-based energy minimization with traditional image processing techniques and pre-detection using convolutional neural networks. This method combines appearance characteristics and spatial constraints to enhance robustness and the accuracy of boundaries. Results from experiments on significant military datasets indicate improved segmentation consistency and clarity, rendering the approach suitable for image analysis tasks that are critical for safety and defense.

The metaphysical technology of the security concept implies a mental-conceptual system of ontological definition of security as a state of being and establishing its conceptual criteria, which allows for planning through a rational algorithm and establishing principled approaches to avoiding and overcoming threats through formal methods, including mathematical deduction. The discussion part, through a review of scientific and literary sources, focuses on the specifics of the metaphysical concept of security in order to identify axiological analytical needs. The results highlight the relevance of the study with scientific novelty, in particular, the contribution of ethical-political discourse to the modern framework of the ontological concept of security. The conclusions and findings demonstrate the practical value of the research, namely, the inevitability of transforming the ethical-political discourse as a subject of reflection on universal scientific knowledge, in the perspective of understanding and evaluating pragmatic security problems.

This article addresses the reassessment of security threats to the Czech Republic in light of developments in the security environment since 2015. The aim is to update the evaluation of selected types of threats and to reflect their current characteristics, with particular emphasis on their interdependencies and their capacity to generate cascading effects. To achieve this objective, a semi-quantitative risk assessment model is applied and extended by incorporating a cascading effect coefficient. The results of the risk assessment indicate that cyberattacks, pandemics, floods, and hazardous substance releases constitute unacceptable risks, whereas the remaining assessed threats fall within the category of conditionally acceptable risks. The proposed methodological extension enables a more accurate assessment of interconnected threats. The findings may be applied in risk assessment processes within crisis management.

The aim of the text is to verify such changing geopolitics through an increasing (possible) cooperation concerning the United States of America, Taiwan and Lithuania in the fields of politics and security, as well as to point out what China has lost by Lithuania’s withdrawal from cooperation in the format ‘16+1’. The research problem is a diplomatic discussion between Lithuania and China, which has achieved increasing interest from foreign countries. The theoretical basis of the research is post-structural theory and Gustavsson’s model. From this conception, Lithuania accepts and raises its identity as it is, primarily according to a huge and unsafe power.

Crime has been a common phenomenon for a long time, but its scope and operation are changing, and this is largely dependent on technological progress. We dealt with the development of crime and its negative effects in Poland during the political transformation process that took place after 1989. At that time, law enforcement agencies were not fully able to cope with this practice, and society painfully felt its effects. Many times, innocent people have faced several types of criminal acts. The main reasons that could have influenced the development of crime were social disorganization, lowering of the standard of living, unemployment, as well as visible and constantly deepening social differentiation. The most important task of law enforcement agencies protecting state borders is to provide citizens with basic forms of security so that they feel peaceful in their area of residence. The services should cooperate with each other at every level of securing state borders and protect citizens against any threats. The aim of the article is to analyze the impact of crimes on state security and the role of the Border Guard in securing the state border. The Border Guard plays a key role in this respect, therefore it should have the widest possible range of instruments enabling it to fulfill its duties in this area. This service proves every day that it has an enormous impact on the sense of security of citizens, and counteracting various threats, including crime, is a key element of the security of our country.

The multidimensional comparative analyzes of transportation of people by rail were used in the article. The time series was analyzed and evaluated in order to detect the following phenomena: trend, seasonality and random factor. The initial time series was divided into parts in order to remove data that, due to the impact of a random phenomenon such as the COVID-19 pandemic, lost trends visible in the past (from January 2012 to December 2019). The Winters’ exponential smoothing method was used for the forecasting. The obtained forecast for 2024 is 390 380 000 passengers transported by rail in Poland. The mean absolute forecast error is 2,18.

Market entities promote ecological logistics by adapting to the legal changes taking place in Europe, seeing an opportunity in such actions to build positive relationships with consumers. The foundations of the concept of corporate social responsibility, emphasizing the reduction of energy consumption in favor of clean production, limiting post-production pollution emissions, reducing CO2 emissions from transport and warehouse activities, on the one hand, translate into cost reduction for the producer, improvement of the company’s competitive position, and the establishment of lasting relationships with customers. On the other hand, they pose challenges where economic efficiency is a key factor. The aim of the article is to analyze the impact of CSR concepts on the efficiency and security of logistics supply chains.

War is theoretically subject to the laws of armed conflict but, in practice, it brings in its wake war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and the crime of aggression. The parties to an armed conflict are unable and/or unwilling to hold the perpetrators of these crimes (oftentimes their own citizens) to account. Part of the rationale for establishment of the International Criminal Court was to offer a way forward in this regard. Yet the suspected war criminal – even the political leader of the aggressor state – must be apprehended and brought to The Hague so that he may face the Court. This is no easy task, thwarted by a variety of formal, factual, and political obstacles; all too often, the idea of a supranational justice system presided over by the International Criminal Court proves illusory, if not fictitious. In this article, these points are discussed in reference to the crimes being committed against the Ukrainian population by the Russian aggressors.

Humanitarian NGOs work on social security and health security at local, regional and global levels. Natural and artificial disasters have increased worldwide in the past, and our future will not be immune. The role of civil society organizations (CSOs) is seen in mixed light, as local, regional and global CSOs exist and operate worldwide. The local group includes those active and valuable only in a single city or town; the regional group consists of those with a national or continental presence; and the global group includes those active locally, regionally and visibly on several continents. One such international organization is the Hungarian Charity Service of the Order of Malta. Understanding the NGOs activity management philosophy and the existence of humanitarian NGOs in the global security arena, and understanding the global activity management of the Order of Malta’s Organisation, The Hungarian Charity Service of the Order of Malta, requires an analysis of international security, the structure of European security and the security issues in Hungary, and the interconnections between them.