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Movements, leaders, victories and the continuing fight for equality.
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In August 1908, a white mob attacked Springfield, Illinois’s Black community, destroying homes and businesses and lynching two Black men. National outrage over the violence helped spur the movement that created the NAACP the following year.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
Bucharest Nine Bucharest Format | |
|---|---|
 Members of the Bucharest Nine | |
| Membership | |
| Establishment | 4 November 2015 |
The Bucharest Nine or the Bucharest Format (B9 or B-9; Romanian: Formatul București, Polish: Bukaresztańska Dziewiątka), or NATO's Eastern Flank[1] (ambiguous as of 2025)[2] is an organization founded on 4 November 2015 in Bucharest, Romania, at the initiative of the president of Romania Klaus Iohannis and the president of Poland Andrzej Duda during a bilateral meeting between them.[3] Its members are Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia. Due to its separate history, Finland is not a member despite its location and its NATO membership since 2023.
Its appearance was mainly a result of perceived aggressive attitude from Russia following the annexation of Crimea from Ukraine and its posterior intervention in eastern Ukraine both in 2014. All members of the B9 were either part of the former Soviet Union (USSR) or members of the defunct Soviet-led Warsaw Pact.[4][5] All members are also members of NATO and members of EU.
Since its foundation on 4 November 2015, the Bucharest Nine countries have held several meetings at various levels. A tabular list follows the historical development.[4]
In June 2018, prior to the B9 meeting that year, President of Poland Andrzej Duda spoke out in favour of Ukrainian and Georgian NATO membership ambitions.[1]
On 10 May 2021, during a B9 video conference summit which the president of the United States Joe Biden joined, President of Romania Klaus Iohannis (one of the two hosts of the summit, the other being Duda) called for "stronger allied military presence [...] on the bloc's eastern flank" following the mobilization of Russian troops near the Russian border with Ukraine which had happened some time before.[6]
On 25 February 2022, the B9 group with the addition of Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, gathered in light of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.[7]
The 10 June 2022 B9 summit was attended virtually by the secretary general of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg,[8] as well as the presidents of the Czech Republic and Slovakia.[9] On it, Duda declared "We want the enhanced forward presence that we have today on NATO's eastern flank to be extended. We want the existing battalion groups to be transformed into brigade groups." Duda added that a brigade group has 3,000 troops, which would mean a "significant and visible strengthening",[10] while Iohannis said that "NATO must be capable to defend every inch of its territory".[11] Iohannis added that the B9 summit agreed in favour of admitting Finland and Sweden into NATO[11] and told participants of the meeting that "security risks to Romania and the Black Sea region are increasing", and in the press release it was written that the meeting was in order to prepare for the most important decisions of NATO's 2022 Madrid summit.[9] Furthermore, the president of Estonia Alar Karis stated during the meeting that all nine members agree that Russia is a threat to NATO.[12]
On 11 October 2022, the B9 presidents, along with the presidents of North Macedonia and Montenegro, condemned and demanded the end of that month's series of Russian missile strikes on Ukrainian civilian targets and described them as war crimes to be punished under international law.[13]
At a summit on 22 February 2023, the heads of state of the Bucharest Nine countries, as well as Biden and Stoltenberg, signed a declaration which issued a condemnation of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and called for an enhanced military presence of NATO on the eastern flank of the alliance.[14]
On 2 June 2025, leaders of the Bucharest Nine and Nordic countries pledged to work toward gradually increasing defence spending to at least 5% of their gross domestic product in response to mounting security threats, particularly from Russia. The commitment was made in a joint statement issued following a summit in Vilnius, co-chaired by Lithuanian president Gitanas Nausėda, Polish president Andrzej Duda, and Romanian president Nicușor Dan. The international meeting was also attended by NATO secretary general Mark Rutte and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy.[15]
| Year | Date | Country | City | Host leader | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 4 November |  Romania |
Bucharest | Klaus Iohannis | [3] |
| 2018 | 8 June |  Poland |
Warsaw | Andrzej Duda | [16] |
| 2019 | 28 February |  Slovakia |
Košice | Andrej Kiska | [17] |
| 2021 | 10 May | Romania |
Bucharest | Klaus Iohannis and Andrzej Duda | [18] |
| 2022 | 25 February | Poland |
Warsaw | Andrzej Duda | [19] |
| 2022 | 10 June | Romania |
Bucharest | Klaus Iohannis and Andrzej Duda | [20] |
| 2023 | 22 February | Poland |
Warsaw | Andrzej Duda, Klaus Iohannis and Zuzana Čaputová | [21] |
| 2023 | 6 June | Slovakia |
Bratislava | Zuzana Čaputová, Andrzej Duda and Klaus Iohannis | [22] |
| 2024 | 11 June |  Latvia |
Riga | Edgars Rinkēvičs | [23] |
| 2025 | 2 June |  Lithuania |
Vilnius | Gitanas Nausėda, Nicușor Dan and Andrzej Duda | [24] |
| 2026 | 13 May | Romania
|
Bucharest | Nicușor Dan and Karol Nawrocki | [25] |
| Year | Date | Country | City | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | 8 November | Romania |
Bucharest | [26] |
| 2017 | 9 October | Poland |
Warsaw | [27] |
| 2020 | 10 March | Lithuania |
Vilnius | [28] |
| 2021 | 27 October |  Estonia |
Tallinn | [29] |
| 2022 | 31 March | Slovakia |
Bratislava | [30] |
| 2023 | 31 March | Poland |
Łódź | [31] |
| 2024 | 26 May |  Belgium |
Brussels | [32] |
| Year | Date | Country | City | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | 12–14 March | Romania |
Bucharest | [33] |
| 2019 | 4 April | Poland |
Warsaw | [34] |
| 2021 | 25 November | Romania |
Bucharest | [35] |
| 2022 | 6 June | Videoconference | [36] | |
| 2023 | 26 April | Poland |
Warsaw | [37] |
| 2024 | 19 September | Romania |
Bucharest | [38] |
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Source: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.
The Bucharest Nine or the Bucharest Format (B9 or B-9; Romanian: Formatul București, Polish: Bukaresztańska Dziewiątka), or NATO's Eastern Flank (ambiguous as of 2025) is an organization founded on 4 November 2015 in Bucharest, Romania, at the initiative of the president of Romania Klaus Iohannis and the president of Poland Andrzej Duda during a bilateral meeting between them. Its members are Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia. Due to its separate history, Finland is not a member despite its location and its NATO membership since 2023. Its appearance was mainly a result of perceived aggressive attitude from Russia following the annexation of Crimea from Ukraine and its posterior intervention in eastern Ukraine both in 2014. All members of the B9 were either part of the former Soviet Union (USSR) or members of the defunct Soviet-led Warsaw Pact. All members are also members of NATO and members of EU.
Bulgaria, officially the Republic of Bulgaria, is a country in Southeastern Europe. It is situated on the eastern portion of the Balkans directly south of the Danube river and west of the Black Sea. Bulgaria is bordered by Greece and Turkey to the south, Serbia and North Macedonia to the west, and Romania across the Danube river to the north. It covers a territory of 110,994 square kilometres (42,855 sq mi), making it the tenth largest within the European Union and the sixteenth-largest country in Europe by area. Sofia is the nation's capital and largest city; other major cities include Plovdiv, Varna, and Burgas. One of the earliest societies in the lands of modern-day Bulgaria was the Karanovo culture (6,500 BC). In the 6th to 3rd century BC, the region was a battleground for ancient Thracians, Persians, Celts, and Macedonians; stability came when the Roman Empire conquered the region in AD 45. After the Roman state splintered, tribal invasions in the region resumed. Around the 6th century, these territories were settled by the early Slavs. The Bulgars, led by Asparuh, attacked from the lands of Old Great Bulgaria and then permanently invaded the Balkans in the late 7th century. They established the First Bulgarian Empire, recognised by treaty in 681 AD by the Byzantine Empire. It dominated most of the Balkans and significantly influenced Slavic cultures by developing the Cyrillic script. The First Bulgarian Empire lasted until the early 11th century, when Byzantine emperor Basil II conquered and dismantled it. A successful Bulgarian revolt in 1185 established a Second Bulgarian Empire, which reached its apex under Ivan Asen II (1218–1241). After numerous exhausting wars and feudal strife, the empire disintegrated and in 1396 fell under Ottoman rule for nearly five centuries. The Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78 resulted in the formation of the third and current Bulgarian state, which declared independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1908. Many ethnic Bulgarians were left outside the new nation's borders, which stoked irredentist sentiments that led to several conflicts with its neighbours and alliances with Germany in both world wars. In 1946, Bulgaria came under the Soviet-led Eastern Bloc and became a socialist state. The ruling Communist Party gave up its monopoly on power after the revolutions of 1989 and allowed multiparty elections. Bulgaria then transitioned into a democracy. Since adopting a democratic constitution in 1991, Bulgaria has been a parliamentary republic composed of 28 provinces, with a high degree of political, administrative, and economic centralisation. A developed country, its advanced, high-income economy is part of the European single market and is largely based on services, followed by manufacturing, mining, and agriculture. Bulgaria has been influenced by its role as a transit country for natural gas and oil pipelines, as well as its strategic location on the Black Sea. Bulgaria is a member state of the European Union, including the Schengen Area and the eurozone, NATO, and various regional suborganizations such as the Bucharest Nine.
The foreign relations of Bulgaria are overseen by the Ministry of Foreign Relations headed by the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Situated in Southeast Europe, Bulgaria is a member of both NATO (since 2004) and the European Union (since 2007). It maintains diplomatic relations with 187 countries. Bulgaria has generally good foreign relations with its neighbours and has proved to be a constructive force in the region under socialist and democratic governments alike. Promoting regional stability, Bulgaria hosted a Southeast European Foreign Ministers meeting in July 1996, and an OSCE conference on Black Sea cooperation in November 1995. Bulgaria also participated in the 1996 South Balkan Defense Ministerial in Albania and it is active in the Southeast European Cooperative Initiative. Since the group's inception in 2015 Bulgaria has been a part of the Bucharest Nine, a subset of Eastern European NATO countries. The Republic of North Macedonia plays an important role in Bulgarian foreign and domestic policy due to historical, ethnic and cultural ties.
The foreign relations of Romania is the policy arm of the Government of Romania which guides its interactions with other nations, their citizens and foreign organizations, as well as its status as a member of the European Union, NATO and other international organizations Romania is part of. Previously a totalitarian state that has faced a revolution and changed its regime at the end of the Cold War, Romania transitioned to a foreign policy centered on Euro-Atlantic integration. Romania joined NATO on 29 March 2004, and the European Union on 1 January 2007, which inadvertently led to positive relations with countries affiliated with those blocks and diminishing of relations with former communist allies such as North Korea, China, Russia or states from the Middle East. Romania is often classified as a middle power given its strategic geographic position, economic growth capabilities and participation in multilateral institutions that shape geopolitical outcomes of major importance. Romania fosters regional cooperation through initiatives such as BSEC, the Three Seas Initiative, Bucharest Nine, Craiova Group and is also part of the Schengen Area. As a semi-presidential state widely recognized as democratic, Romania prioritizes multilateralism, collective security and democratic values and maintains close to very close relations with each of its five neighbours given mutual past cooperation, culture or other aspects.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →Madam C.J. Walker
