Former Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite stated that NATO failed to stop Russia and that the West still lives in a “different world” than Russia, Lithuanian public media LRT writes.
At a conference at Vilnius University, Grybauskaite said: “We have failed to deter Russia […] from going to war. We are still failing to explain to the people what needs to be done. We are still failing to arm [Ukraine] so that they can strike back.”
After Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, the politicians of the Baltic states warned the leaders of the Western countries about the threat from Russia, but received no response. Grybauskaite reminded that
the Baltic countries were laughed at, criticized, and pretended not to be heard,
and now the former leaders are admitting that the Baltics were right. Despite this, even now Western countries do not listen to the warnings.
The former president criticized the West for treating the war as a distant problem and added that Western leaders are unable to convey to their people that Russia is an existential threat. “We are still living in peace, with some support for Ukraine, but Russia is living in a state of war, the whole of its society, its industry, is already at war, not only against Ukraine, but against the whole West. But we are not there yet. Why?” asked the politician.
In her speech, Grybauskaite also criticized the prevailing mood in connection with the NATO summit in Vilnius, where Ukraine will be offered support with complex and overly detailed statements instead of a concrete promise of admission. She pointed out that this means another failure. The West shows that it is unable to learn from its mistakes, from what happened in Crimea and Georgia. The former president called to drop illusions and to understand that Russian aggression will only increase, which is expected in a society dominated by imperialist thinking.
Read full article in English here: https://www.lrt.lt/en/news-in-english/19/2027748/europe-said-baltics-were-right-about-russia-but-is-ignoring-us-again-says-lithuania-s-former-president