#Landsbergis

[bukimevieningi]

Demokratijų bendrijai vadovaus neblaivus už vairo pagautas dr. Mantas Adomėnas

Lietuvos Respublikos Vyriausybės iškeltas kandidatas dr. Mantas Adomėnas išrinktas Demokratijų bendrijos generaliniu sekretoriumi 2024-2027 m. kadencijai. 2023.08.12 Užsienio reikalų viceministras Mantas Adomėnas paskelbė, kad traukiasi iš einamų pareigų, nes vairavo neblaivus. „Padariau didelę ir neatleistiną klaidą – vairavau neblaivus. Todėl traukiuosi iš užsienio reikalų viceministro…

[panimoonchild]

How to react Russia's aggression in Ukraine and also in other countries it's to support Ukraine, it's allow Ukraine to use the weapons they already have the way they need to use them

I'm almost on the verge of tears because of acknowledgment.

The President of Ukraine and the Prime Minister of Spain signed a bilateral agreement on security cooperation.

According to the Presidential Administration, the agreement provides for €1 billion in military assistance to Ukraine through 2024, including, in particular, the provision of Patriot missiles and Leopard tanks for a total of €1.1 billion. The people of Ukraine feel enormous gratefulness for such immense and important support!

Also, we receive Spain support throughout the 10-year term of the document.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy also said that by 2027, Spain would provide another €5 billion in aid through the European Peace Fund.

Always spot on👏🫂😌

[the-restisconfetti]

Thread

[tomorrowusa]

The EU is considering whether it is a good idea to be the friend of a friend of a war criminal.

'Pandora’s box': EU weighs changing relations with China

If Xi Jinping chooses to "befriend a war criminal, it is our duty to get very serious about China," Lithuania's foreign minister, Gabrielius Landsbergis, told DW when asked what he thought about the Chinese president's three-day visit to Moscow and his meeting with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.

The International Criminal Court issued a warrant for Putin late last week, accusing him of war crimes.

The only way forward for the European Union now, Landsbergis said, is to take "first steps on de-risking and eventual decoupling from China. The sooner we start, the better for the union."

[ ... ]

China has been supporting Russia's war efforts, however, in several indirect ways. This includes the ramping up of economic exchanges and exports of dual-use equipment, said Grzegorz Stec, an analyst at the Brussels office of the Mercator Institute for China Studies, a German foundation.

Among the equipment exports are "tires, trucks, clothing and other goods that can be used by the Russian military, although those are not specifically weapons," he told DW.

If the West were to find tangible proof of China providing large-scale military equipment to Russia, Stec pointed out, that would be "a red line" for the Europeans. But he recommended taking a cautious approach before accusing China of supplying weapons to Russia, given the magnitude of the potential geopolitical implications.

The perceived Chinese tilt towards Russia has not done it much good in Europe.

Regardless of this reluctance, Europe's attitude towards China is more skeptical than it has been in decades, said Reinhard Bütikofer, chair of the European Parliament's China delegation.

"The Chinese haven't been very successful in dealing with the Europeans lately," he told DW. "I would say they have squandered a lot of the political capital that they used to have."

[ ... ]

"The Chinese are trying to balance two incompatible goals. Being best buddies with Putin and being good friends of the Europeans at the same time," Bütikofer said. He made clear he doesn't think they can achieve both."As Abraham Lincoln said, you can fool some of the people all of the time or all the people some of the time. But you cannot fool all the people all the time." In concrete political terms, he explained, this meant that they would "fail if they insist on their no-limits friendship with the Russians."

In 1949, as he was laying the groundwork for the establishment of The People’s Republic of China, Chairman Mao Zedong declared, "The Chinese people have stood up!" The brutal invasion of Ukraine has finally made Europe stand up to Russia’s neocolonialist revanchism.

China will do better if it understands that a significant shift in thinking has taken place in Europe. The days of playing footsie with Putin and of accommodating Russian oligarchs in European democracies are gone.

[katinasmarkizas]

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A post shared by Saint Javelin (@saintjavelin)

🇱🇹❤️🇺🇦

[zvaigzdelasas]

19 May 23

[dduane]

Meanwhile, in Lithuania...

(via Gabrielius Landsbergis, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Lithuania, over at the Ex-Bird Place)

[saldziakrauje]

after the coming collapse of the united states, the comprador bourgeoisie of the baltics will no longer have the power to continue their terrorism against the baltic people

something's gotta give. within our lifetimes we will witness the baltics liberated of nato-sponsored neonazism, im sure of it

[elcorreografico]

Exitoso Festival Internacional de Danzas Lituanas en Berisso

#Berisso #Cultura #Colectividades | Exitoso #FestivalInternacional de #DanzasLituanas en Berisso

El sábado 17, se llevó a cabo el Festival Internacional de Danzas Lituanas “Allí, donde fluye el río Nemunas”, en el marco de los festejos por el 50º aniversario de los Conjuntos Infantil “Skaidra” y Juvenil “Nemunas”. Durante la jornada realizada en las adyacencias del Puerto La Plata, margen de Berisso, sonaron las canciones lituanas ante más de 1.200 asistentes para ver este gran evento que en…

[bukimevieningi]

Gabrielius Landsbergis išskrido pasitarti pas šeiminiunkus

Rugsėjo 22-25 dienomis Lietuvos užsienio reikalų ministras Gabrielius Landsbergis dalyvaus Jungtinių Tautų (JT) Generalinės Asamblėjos 79-osios sesijos bendruosiuose debatuose ir kituose aukšto lygio renginiuose Niujorke, Jungtinėse Amerikos Valstijose (JAV). Lietuvos diplomatijos vadovas taip pat dalyvaus Niujorke vyksiančioje neformalioje ES užsienio reikalų taryboje, JAV valstybės sekretoriaus…

[dontforgetukraine]

"I would like to address the recurring question of those 'ordinary Russians' who 'shouldn’t be sanctioned'.

I hear talk of ordinary Russians’ innocence, but then I see ordinary Russians murdering ordinary Ukrainians.

I see ordinary Russian mothers saying goodbye to their ordinary Russian sons and wishing them good luck with their ordinary Russian war crimes.

I see ordinary Russians celebrating murder. I see ordinary Russian parents dressing up their ordinary Russian children in military uniforms and painting the letter Z on a cardboard tank costume.

I see ordinary Russians coming together to make a huge Z formation in the town square.

Ordinary Russia is sick. Healing will be a long and gruelling process which can only start when Russia, not just Putin, is defeated. Without a defeat in Ukraine, Russia will just keep spreading.

So about those “unfair” sanctions against “ordinary Russians”... Well, anything which slows down Russia’s total war machine will have ordinary Lithuanians’ support. Whatever victory takes. Slava Ukraini."

—Gabrielius Landsbergis, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Member of Parliament of Lithuania

[mariacallous]

Russia is up to so much mischief around the Baltic Sea that even the things that it ends up not doing cause Western alarm bells to ring.

In just the past few days, Russia has floated a now-you-see it, now-you-don’t unilateral plan to change its maritime borders with Lithuania and Finland; tried to sneak its way closer to Estonia; and spooked the head of the Swedish Armed Forces so hard that he publicly feared for the safety of Gotland, Sweden’s biggest Baltic island. 

All that came on the heels of a broadening campaign of apparent Russian sabotage across the region, including mysterious fires, disrupted trains, and damaged undersea pipelines. A Russian spy ship is heading to the Gulf of Finland to keep an eye on things. The Norwegian police just warned about a new Russian campaign to sabotage Western arms deliveries to Ukraine, invoking the same “see something, say something” public warnings used for terrorist outfits. Due to sabotage fears, Poland had to increase security at the main airport that transports aid deliveries to Ukraine. All the while, Russian efforts to jam GPS signals for commercial aviation in the region continue apace.

Together, the Russian moves are meant to test boundaries—sometimes literally—as well as provoke a response, distract its neighbors, and swarm the West with the kitchen sink of full-spectrum harassment. For Russia, the battlefield is most certainly not limited to Ukraine, and when it comes to expanding it, the Baltic region holds a special place both in Russia’s imperialist past and Moscow’s expansionist present.

“The last time Russia had this little access in the Baltic was centuries ago,” said Charly Salonius-Pasternak, a researcher with the Finnish Institute of International Affairs. In Russian President Vladimir Putin’s mind, “for Russia to be recognized as a great power, it must be dominant in the Baltic Sea. That clearly wasn’t the case before NATO expansion, and now is even less so.”

The moves afoot aren’t the traditional kind of land grabs, such as the ones that Russia previously pulled off in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, and is now attempting with the rest of the country. But it may be Putin’s marker for a new kind of low-intensity campaign, Salonious-Pasternak said.

“Somewhere in his mind, he may have this idea, not to do what the USSR did, but to cause continuous mayhem until he has the resources to do something about it,” he added.

Consider the curious case of the Russian bid to change its maritime borders with Lithuania and Finland. The Russian Defense Ministry released the proposal publicly, but it mysteriously disappeared in less than a day; Russian officials denied that they were seeking to change the border. But the very notion sparked a furious response from Russia’s neighbors—Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis called it “an obvious escalation against NATO and the EU”—while the whole spat highlighted the difficulties of dealing with such inchoate threats.

“To me, it looks like a provocation,” said Martin Kragh, a senior research fellow at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs. “No matter how the West responds, it will have an effect at a very low cost for Russia. If the West makes a strong response, it can use that for domestic and international propaganda purposes; if they don’t, Russia can exploit that, arguing the claims are legitimate. It’s a ‘heads-I-win, tails-you-lose’ situation.”

The small changes to the maritime map may not have come to pass yet, but the Baltic states and several other NATO neighbors are taking no chances with what Kragh calls Russia’s strategy of “creeping annexation.” 

Over the weekend, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—alongside Finland, Norway, and Poland—announced plans for a “drone border wall” to protect against Russia’s encroachments and destabilizing maneuvers on the borders by enhancing video surveillance of the sprawling frontier. Estonia, like Norway, has also stepped up its public warnings about Russian misbehavior on the border and regional sabotage more broadly. NATO held the first meeting of its new Critical Undersea Infrastructure Network last week, with a particular eye on Russia. Even Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is otherwise engaged, took the time while speaking to reporters over the weekend to recognize the clear and present danger that Russian designs pose to the Baltics.

To make sense of why Russia, with a grinding war on its hands in Ukraine, is busy making mischief in the Baltic Sea requires understanding both what’s new and what’s eternal for Russia’s regional objectives. 

What’s new is that with the accession of Finland and Sweden to the Western alliance since early 2023, the Baltic has become, for all intents and purposes, a NATO lake, with member states now ringing the entire body of water— with the exception of a bit of Russia. Though Putin downplayed the significance of that seismic shift at the time, and some Western commentators stress the need for even more NATO vigilance in the region despite the expansion, the geostrategic shift was fundamental.

As a result, Russia realizes that due to its own actions in Ukraine, it has lost ground in an area crucial to its international power projection. That’s why it is lashing out in the region, albeit haphazardly, as a French report noted in November 2023 and a Norwegian intelligence assessment put it earlier this year.

“If you want to undermine the collective West, then these regions—the Gulf of Finland, Estonia, Lithuania—all those territories are easy to access for Russia,” Kragh said. “They don’t have any other borders when it comes to challenging the West.”

But the reason that the loss of the Baltic hurts Russia so much, and Putin in particular, is not just because of Finland and Sweden’s military might (Sweden just gave Ukraine a massive arms assistance package) and the reach of geography. There is also the weight of history. 

Since the time of Peter the Great, Putin’s self-styled role model, Russia’s window to the West (and to great-power status) has come through the chilly waters of the Baltic. Russian imperial aspirations in the 18th and 19th centuries came through the defeat of Sweden and the vassalization of Finland. Later, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, when not busy carving up Eastern Europe otherwise, briefly made a postwar bid for Bornholm, a strategic Danish island. Putin will be hard-pressed to make Russia great again if he can’t scrape back a semblance of power in the Baltic.

“Of course it’s a blow to have the Baltic Sea turned into a NATO lake. The Baltic has been a crucial objective of Russian and Soviet foreign and military policy since the time of Peter I,” said Norman Naimark, a historian at Stanford University who has written about Bornholm and other Soviet adventures. “Putin is also a Leningrader, which means that he has a special eye on access to the Baltic and egress into and out of the belts and the sound,” he said, referring to the critical straits connecting the Baltic to the wider world.

Russia’s neighbors haven’t been shy about calling out Moscow’s latest provocations. But that doesn’t mean that the mischief will stop any time soon, as long as it offers Putin a way to redress, even partially, what he sees as a geographic and historic imbalance.

“What is fascinating is the innovation in the Russian toolbox. They keep finding new ways of pushing,” Kragh said. “It’s like playing whack-a-mole—you keep hitting them, and they pop up somewhere else. The Baltic Sea simply provides a very good and opportunistic area for them to operate in.”

[planetofsnarfs]

Russia’s Defense Ministry has unilaterally moved to revise the borders of Russian territorial waters in the Baltic Sea, drafting a government decree on the expansion without even bothering to notify NATO  members Finland and Lithuania.

In reaction to the surprised responses of the Baltic Sea states, the Kremlin on Wednesday issued a statement that seems bound only to make matters worse. Insisting that there’s “nothing political” about the proposed border change, Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in the same breath that the “political situation” has in fact “changed significantly” since the borders were drawn.

“You see how tensions are escalating, what the level of confrontation is, especially in the Baltic region. This requires our agencies to take corresponding steps to ensure security,” he told reporters, using language that sounds awfully similar to Putin’s oft-repeated claim that invading Ukraine was necessary for “security” against NATO.

“The state border of the Russian Federation at sea will change,” reads the draft decree, which was published on a government portal Tuesday. The decree would take effect in January 2025 if approved.

The Defense Ministry argues that the 1985 measurement used to determine borders relied on outdated charts and thus must be “invalidated.” The border around Russian islands in the eastern part of the Gulf of Finland and around Kaliningrad would then be adjusted, though the decree provides no specifics on what the adjustment would entail.

The move apparently came as a shock to Lithuania and Finland.

“Russia has not been in contact with Finland in the matter,” Finnish President Alexander Stubb wrote on X, adding that “the political leadership is monitoring the situation closely.”

Finnish Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen urged Russia to stick to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and stop “causing confusion.”

“This is an obvious escalation against NATO and the EU, and must be met with an appropriately firm response,” Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said.

Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, in comments to the TT news agency, bluntly said: “Russia can’t unilaterally decide on new borders.”

[mokhosz-nafo]

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Criticizes Calls to Lift Anti-Russian Sanctions

Lithuanian Minister of Foreign Affairs Gabrielius Landsbergis addressed calls by Russian oppositionists to cancel anti-Russian sanctions, emphasizing the complicity of ordinary Russians in the war against Ukraine.

"I hear conversations about the innocence of ordinary Russians, but then I see how ordinary Russians kill ordinary Ukrainians," Landsbergis stated.

"I see ordinary Russian mothers saying goodbye to their sons, wishing them success in their war crimes. I see parents dressing their children in military uniforms, drawing the letter Z on cardboard tank suits. I see crowds forming the letter Z in public squares.

Simple Russia is sick. Healing will be long and arduous and will only begin when Russia, not just Putin, is defeated.

Regarding 'unfair' sanctions against 'ordinary Russians,' anything that slows down the Russian military machine will have the support of ordinary Lithuanians, no matter the cost of victory. Glory to Ukraine!" Landsbergis wrote on the social network X.

[beardedmrbean]

Latvia and Romania, two member countries of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), said Russian drones violated their airspace over the weekend in a move that could stoke boiling-hot tensions between Moscow and the military alliance. 

Latvia’s government said Sunday a Russian drone had fallen over the east of the country the previous day, likely crossing in from Belarus. 

Separately, on Sunday, Romania’s foreign ministry said "criminal" Russian airborne drones encroached on its airspace while targeting Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure. 

Mircea Geoana, the outgoing deputy secretary general of NATO and Romania’s former top diplomat, said the military alliance condemned Russia’s violation of Romanian airspace.

"While we have no information indicating an intentional attack by Russia against allies, these acts are irresponsible and potentially dangerous," he wrote on X, formerly Twitter. 

Article 5 of NATO stipulates that if a NATO country is attacked, all member nations will come to its defense. 

"The one I would be more concerned about is Latvia," Andrew D’Anieri, resident fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, told Fox News Digital. "It’s a country away from Ukraine. You have to go through all of Belarus to get to Latvia from Ukraine."

"If you were going to try to test NATO's Article 5, you do it by sending a fully strapped drone essentially, and having it kind of just veer into Latvian airspace and see what the reaction is as kind of a low-risk move by the Russians."

Latvia’s military also said there were no indications that Moscow or Minsk purposely directed a drone into the country. 

"There's certainly a chance it was intentional," claimed D'Anieri. "I think the Latvians want to kind of manage their response. If you say, ‘Oh, the Russians tried to hit us with a drone,’ then that demands a much greater response. So I think cooler heads right now are prevailing, but there could be more info that comes out, or we could certainly see this again over the next several months."

Romania’s defense ministry said Russia attacked Ukraine close to its border in the early hours of Sunday, and two Romanian F-16s took off from an airbase to "monitor the situation" around 2:30 a.m. local time. 

Fragments from the drone were found in a Romanian village near the Danube River, and officials are conducting searches in a second area where fragments may have fallen.

While incidents such as this would have been "unthinkable" three years ago, they "are now treated as routine," Lithuanian foreign minister Gabrielius Landsbergis wrote in a post to X on Sunday.

"Nothing should be landing on Ukraine, or Latvia, or anywhere on NATO territory, but this is the new reality our inaction has allowed to emerge. Lithuania will, of course, be supporting a strong allied response."

Ukraine's new foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha‎, said the incidents served as a ​​"stark reminder that Russia's aggressive actions extend beyond Ukraine."

The war has intensified in recent weeks as Russia has launched large-scale strikes on Ukraine’s critical infrastructure and closed in on the capture of Pokrovsk, a key transportation hub that could lock up its control of the Donetsk region. 

The Russians are advancing on Ukraine’s frontlines in the east in an effort to take control of the whole of the Donbas region. 

Ukraine, meanwhile, has been stepping up its long-range strikes inside Russia and urging its western allies to lift restrictions on using the weapons they provide to strike deep into Russia. 

[shattered-pieces]

The former head of Navalny's campaign headquarters, Leonid Volkov, was attacked in his ego at home in Vilnius. This was reported by the ex-press secretary of Alexei Navalny, Kira Yarmysh. "They broke the window in his car with a hammer and sprayed tear gas in his eyes, after which the attacker began to beat Leonid with a hammer. Now Leonid is at home, the police and an ambulance are on their way to him," she wrote. After that, doctors arrived and decided to hospitalize the victim. "The news about the attack on Leonid Volkov is shocking," said the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania. "Relevant bodies are working. The guilty will have to answer for their crime," added the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania, Gabrielus Landsbergis. "The key risk now is that we will all be killed. Well, it's quite an obvious thing," Leonid Volkov told the publication on the evening of March 12, a few hours before the attack. In the photo: Volkov is taken to the hospital by ambulance. It is obvious that Putin and his agency have moved on from state terrorism and consider it possible to organize attacks and murders of undesirables in the countries of the European Union. We wish Leonid a speedy recovery and appropriate protection and safety measures! European law enforcement agencies should take comprehensive measures to detain and arrest all Putin agents, killers and their accomplices. The time has come to put an end to this resolutely and universally. No Putin's terror! We are not afraid and they will not intimidate us!✊🏻 UPD "The great terror of a small dictator has begun" - this is how Khristo Grozev commented on the attack on Volkov. "Activists, journalists and just free-thinking people - be careful. Do not be afraid, but be careful. Don't make it easier for brainless bandits," Grozev added on X social networks.