1.
Valga, Estonia
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Valga is a town in southern Estonia and the capital of Valga County. Until their separation in 1920, Valga and the town of Valka in northern Latvia were one town, the area of Valga is 16.5 square kilometres and that of Valka is 14.2 km2. Their populations are respectively 12,261 and 6,164, on 21 December 2007 all border-crossing points were removed and roads and fences opened between the two countries with both countries joining the Schengen Agreement. The distance to Tartu is 89 km, Pärnu 144 km, Tallinn 245 km, Riga 175 km, Valga is situated at the junction of roads and railways. The Hummuli–Tartu–Riga railway is connected via Tapa with the Tallinn–Narva–St Petersburg main line, after closing April 2008 for extensive repair work Edelaraudtee railway services from other parts of Estonia to Valga re-opened in January 2010. From 1 January 2014 all domestic services in Estonia are operated by Elron who runs three services a day from Valga to Tartu. The journeys either operate as through services to Tallinn or have a connection available at Tartu, the journey to Tartu takes around one hour and 15 minutes. The journey time to Riga is between 3h12m and 3h30m, during the Cold War, Valga was home to Valga air base. Since 1944, a newspaper, Valgamaalane, has been published. Since 2003, there has also been a local newspaper Walk, there also is a local correspondence office of Estonian Television and a local radio – Raadio Ruut. Valga has concluded several cooperation agreements, the nearest is an agreement with the neighbouring town of Valka. There are also cooperation agreements with Oakland, Maryland and Östhammar Municipality, there are long-term friendly relations with Hallsberg Municipality in Sweden and the towns of Lübz in Germany and Tornio in Finland. Step by step, the schools and kindergartens are also being modernized, since 2003, a new water treatment plant has improved the quality of water in the town. In the private sector, there have been investments in trade, light industry. Valga is home to several notable Estonian sports teams, warrior Valga, is a football club that currently plays in the III liiga. Warrior Valga played in the Meistriliiga from 2003–2006, Valga, is a basketball club that currently plays in the Estonian top-tier Korvpalli Meistriliiga and the Baltic Basketball League. Valga lies within the humid continental climate zone. 1286, Valga appears for the first time in the register of the city of Riga
2.
Estonia
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Estonia, officially the Republic of Estonia, is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia, across the Baltic Sea lies Sweden in the west and Finland in the north. The territory of Estonia consists of a mainland and 2,222 islands and islets in the Baltic Sea, covering 45,339 km2 of land and water, and is influenced by a humid continental climate. The territory of Estonia has been inhabited since at least 6500 BC, in 1988, during the Singing Revolution, the Estonian Supreme Soviet issued the Estonian Sovereignty Declaration in defiance of Soviet rule, and independence was restored on 20 August 1991. Estonia is a parliamentary republic divided into fifteen counties. Its capital and largest city is Tallinn, with a population of 1.3 million, it is one of the least-populous member states of the European Union, Eurozone, North Atlantic Treaty Organization, OECD and Schengen Area. Estonia is a country with an advanced, high-income economy that is among the fastest growing in the EU. Its Human Development Index ranks very highly, and it performs favourably in measurements of economic freedom, civil liberties, the 2015 PISA test places Estonian high school students 3rd in the world, behind Singapore and Japan. Citizens of Estonia are provided with health care, free education. Since independence the country has developed its IT sector, becoming one of the worlds most digitally advanced societies. In 2005 Estonia became the first nation to hold elections over the Internet, in the Estonian language, the oldest known endonym of the Estonians was maarahvas, meaning country people or people of the land. The land inhabited by Estonians was called Maavald meaning Country Parish or Land Parish, one hypothesis regarding the modern name of Estonia is that it originated from the Aesti, a people described by the Roman historian Tacitus in his Germania. The historic Aesti were allegedly Baltic people, whereas the modern Estonians are Finno-Ugric, the geographical areas between Aesti and Estonia do not match, with Aesti being further down south. Ancient Scandinavian sagas refer to a land called Eistland, as the country is called in Icelandic. Early Latin and other ancient versions of the name are Estia and Hestia, esthonia was a common alternative English spelling prior to 1921. Human settlement in Estonia became possible 13,000 to 11,000 years ago, the oldest known settlement in Estonia is the Pulli settlement, which was on the banks of the river Pärnu, near the town of Sindi, in south-western Estonia. According to radiocarbon dating it was settled around 11,000 years ago, the earliest human inhabitation during the Mesolithic period is connected to Kunda culture, which is named after the town of Kunda in northern Estonia. At that time the country was covered with forests, and people lived in communities near bodies of water
3.
Russia
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Russia, also officially the Russian Federation, is a country in Eurasia. The European western part of the country is more populated and urbanised than the eastern. Russias capital Moscow is one of the largest cities in the world, other urban centers include Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod. Extending across the entirety of Northern Asia and much of Eastern Europe, Russia spans eleven time zones and incorporates a range of environments. It shares maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk, the East Slavs emerged as a recognizable group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD. Founded and ruled by a Varangian warrior elite and their descendants, in 988 it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire, beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium. Rus ultimately disintegrated into a number of states, most of the Rus lands were overrun by the Mongol invasion. The Soviet Union played a role in the Allied victory in World War II. The Soviet era saw some of the most significant technological achievements of the 20th century, including the worlds first human-made satellite and the launching of the first humans in space. By the end of 1990, the Soviet Union had the second largest economy, largest standing military in the world. It is governed as a federal semi-presidential republic, the Russian economy ranks as the twelfth largest by nominal GDP and sixth largest by purchasing power parity in 2015. Russias extensive mineral and energy resources are the largest such reserves in the world, making it one of the producers of oil. The country is one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states and possesses the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, Russia is a great power as well as a regional power and has been characterised as a potential superpower. The name Russia is derived from Rus, a state populated mostly by the East Slavs. However, this name became more prominent in the later history, and the country typically was called by its inhabitants Русская Земля. In order to distinguish this state from other states derived from it, it is denoted as Kievan Rus by modern historiography, an old Latin version of the name Rus was Ruthenia, mostly applied to the western and southern regions of Rus that were adjacent to Catholic Europe. The current name of the country, Россия, comes from the Byzantine Greek designation of the Kievan Rus, the standard way to refer to citizens of Russia is Russians in English and rossiyane in Russian. There are two Russian words which are translated into English as Russians
4.
Russians
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Russians are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Eastern Europe. The majority of Russians inhabit the state of Russia, while notable minorities exist in Ukraine, Kazakhstan. A large Russian diaspora exists all over the world, with numbers in the United States, Germany, Israel. Russians are the most numerous group in Europe. They are predominantly Orthodox Christians by religion, the Russian language is official in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, and also spoken as a secondary language in many former Soviet states. There are two Russian words which are translated into English as Russians. One is русские, which most often means ethnic Russians, another is россияне, which means citizens of Russia. The former word refers to ethnic Russians, regardless of what country they live in, under certain circumstances this term may or may not extend to denote members of other Russian-speaking ethnic groups from Russia, or from the former Soviet Union. The latter word refers to all people holding citizenship of Russia, regardless of their ethnicity, translations into other languages often do not distinguish these two groups. The name of the Russians derives from the Rus people, the name Rus would then have the same origin as the Finnish and Estonian names for Sweden, Ruotsi and Rootsi. According to other theories the name Rus is derived from Proto-Slavic *roud-s-ь, the modern Russians formed from two groups of East Slavic tribes, Northern and Southern. The tribes involved included the Krivichs, Ilmen Slavs, Radimichs, Vyatiches, genetic studies show that modern Russians do not differ significantly from Belarusians and Ukrainians. Some ethnographers, like Zelenin, affirm that Russians are more similar to Belarusians, such Uralic peoples included the Merya and the Muromians. Outside archaeological remains, little is known about the predecessors to Russians in general prior to 859 AD when the Primary Chronicle starts its records and it is thought that by 600 AD, the Slavs had split linguistically into southern, western, and eastern branches. Later, both Belarusians and South Russians formed on this ethnic linguistic ground, the same Slavic ethnic population also settled the present-day Tver Oblast and the region of Beloozero. With the Uralic substratum, they formed the tribes of the Krivichs, in 2010, the worlds Russian population was 129 million people of which 86% were in Russia,11. 5% in the CIS and Baltic countries, with a further 2. 5% living in other countries. Roughly 111 million ethnic Russians live in Russia, 80% of whom live in the European part of Russia, ethnic Russians historically migrated throughout the area of former Russian Empire and Soviet Union, sometimes encouraged to re-settle in borderlands by the Tsarist and later Soviet government. On some occasions ethnic Russian communities, such as Lipovans who settled in the Danube delta or Doukhobors in Canada, after the Russian Revolution and Russian Civil War starting in 1917, many Russians were forced to leave their homeland fleeing the Bolshevik regime, and millions became refugees
5.
Paratrooper
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Paratroopers are military parachutists — military personnel trained in parachuting into an operation and usually functioning as part of an airborne force. Military parachutists and parachutes were first used on a large scale during World War II for troop distribution and transportation, Paratroopers are often used to seize strategic objectives such as airfields or bridges. They are used for tactical advantage as they can be inserted into the battlefield from the air and they jump out of airplanes using their parachutes to land safely on the ground. It is one of the three types of forced entry strategic techniques for entering a theater of war, the two are by land and sea. Another common use for paratroopers is to establish an airhead for landing other units and this doctrine was first practically applied to warfare by the Italians and the Soviets. During World War II, however, the two countries ground forces were overstretched, leaving their elite paratroopers to be employed as regular infantry. The first extensive use of paratroopers was by the Germans during World War II and later in the war also by the Americans, owing to the limited capacity of cargo aircraft of the period they rarely, if ever, jumped in groups much larger than 20 from one aircraft. In English language parlance, this load of paratroopers is called a stick, the terms come from the common use of white chalk on the sides of aircraft and vehicles to mark and update numbers of personnel and equipment being emplaned. In World War II, paratroopers most often used parachutes of a circular or round design and these parachutes could be steered to a small degree by pulling on the risers and suspension lines which attach to the parachute canopy itself. German paratroopers, whose harnesses had only a single riser attached at the back, today, paratroopers still use round parachutes, or round parachutes modified as to be more fully controlled with toggles. The parachutes are deployed by a static line. Mobility of the parachutes is often limited to prevent scattering of the troops when a large number parachute together. Some military exhibition units and special forces units use ram-air parachutes, many countries have one or several paratrooper units, usually associated to the national Army or Air Force, but in some cases to the Navy. Argentina was the first country on the continent of South America to use Paratroopers, the first paratroopers were issued jump helmets similar to that used by the British at the time, as the rest of the equipment slightly based on the Fallschirmjäger. The 4th Parachute Brigade is a unit of the Argentine Army specialised in airborne assault operations and it is based in Córdoba, Córdoba Province. The Rapid Deployment Force is based on this unit, the members of the unit wear Boina Rojas of the paratroopers with unit badges. During the Second World War the Australian Army formed the 1st Parachute Battalion, however, in the post-war period Australias parachute capability was primarily maintained by special forces units. In the 1970s and 1980s a parachute capability was revived, while a Parachute Battalion Group based on the 3rd Battalion
6.
Hero of the Russian Federation
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Hero of the Russian Federation is the highest honorary title of the Russian Federation. A person that has been bestown this title receives a Gold Star medal. The title is awarded to persons for service to the Russian state and nation, the title is bestowed by decree of the president of the Russian Federation. Russian citizenship or being in the service of the Russian state is not obligatory, the title was established in 1992, and has been awarded more than 970 times since then, including more than 440 times posthumously. The title Hero of Russia is a successor to Hero of the Soviet Union, the corresponding Gold Star is derived from the Soviet design, created by architect Miron Merzhanov and approved by Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of August 1,1939. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russian Federation under president Boris Yeltsin retained a modified award by Law of the Russian Federation № 2553-1 of March 20,1992. Article 71 of the Constitution of Russia permits titles, orders and medals to be presented by the government and this is the highest honour that can be presented by the Russian president to a citizen. The title of Hero of the Russian Federation can be awarded for a deed in the service of the state. It can be awarded to civilian and military personnel. The title can also be awarded if the heroic act costs the recipient his or her life. The President of the Russian Federation is the main conferring authority of the award, the insignia of Hero of the Russian Federation is worn on the left side of the chest above all other medals and decorations. Its medal is worn in full size, there is no ribbon bar or rosette that can be worn in its lieu. When Soviet titles, such as Hero of the Soviet Union or Hero of Socialist Labour are worn together with the medal of the Russian title, the latter has precedence. The insignia of the title of Hero of the Russian Federation is also called the Gold Star medal, the Gold Star medal is a gold five-pointed star with smooth 15mm dihedral rays on the obverse. The otherwise plain reverse bears the prominent relief inscription in 2mm high letters HERO OF RUSSIA at its center, in the upper portion, the insignia is secured to a standard Russian square mount by a ring through the suspension loop. The mount is covered by a silk moiré tricolour ribbon of white, blue, the majority of the early recipients of the title fell into two categories, participants in the Chechnya conflicts or cosmonauts. On some occasions, the person who was awarded the title was killed while in the course of duty, such as Major Denis Vetchinov and this includes those killed in battle as well as assassinated government officials. An example of such a recipient was Akhmad Kadyrov, the governor of Chechnya
Soviet Union
Russia
