#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…

[dontforgetukraine]

Why do we call it "hybrid warfare"? Because if we called it terrorism then we would have to do something about it. —Gabrielius Landsbergis

[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👏🫂😌

[mylimoji]

[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)

🇱🇹❤️🇺🇦

[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

[unhonestlymirror]

Foreign Minister of Lithuania: There should be no room for terrorism and anti-Semitism in the world and in Lithuania.

On the anniversary of the Hamas terrorist group attack that shook Israel, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis stressed that anti-Semitism is unacceptable in Lithuania and any other country.

“Today, remembering the tragic Hamas attack on Israeli citizens, we must remember that any violence and hatred against peaceful citizens is unacceptable. Tolerance of anti-Semitism, as well as any other form of hatred, is unacceptable. It is our duty to promote tolerance, understanding, and respect between cultures and nations in order to prevent such tragedies in the future. There should be no room for terrorism and anti-Semitism in the world and in 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.”

[bukimevieningi]

Valdovas Vytautas Landsbergis apie "prietrumpus"

Kaip suprantame iš Vytauto Landsbergio naujo kūrinio, jis nepatenkintas Donaldu Trampu ir jo skleidžiama politika. Balkonėlyve vadinamas “Valdovu”, o socialiniuose tinkluose negražiai pravardžiuojamas kaip “ožys”, “Sorošo kušio utėlė” ir kitais epitetais, Vytautas jaučia didžiulį nusivylimą, kurį išreiškia poezija. “PASAKŲ DANGORAIŽIS ……. Po to atėjo prietrankų karalius. Prietrumpų. Jis…

[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

[beardedmrbean]

Estonia and Latvia, following the example of Lithuania, imposed a ban on the entry of a number of Georgian authorities in sharp condemnation of the significant human rights violations related to the Georgian protests.

Details: According to an Estonian Foreign Ministry statement, on 2 December, Foreign Minister Margus Tsakhkna imposed sanctions that barred 11 Georgian government officials from entering Estonia, including Georgian Interior Minister Vakhtang Gomelauri and the Georgian Dream party’s Honorary Chairman Bidzina Ivanishvili.

According to Tsahkna, the entrance restriction was issued on these individuals because they participated in serious abuses of human rights by violently suppressing legal protests in Georgia.

Quote: "The Georgian people should be able to stand up for their rights because their ruling party has been systematically lying to Georgians for a long time, and people have the right to express their feelings through protests. Violence against protesters is disproportionate and against human rights,"  Tsakhna said.

The Estonian Foreign Ministry stated that Latvia and Lithuania have enforced similar entrance prohibitions.

In a statement, the Latvian Foreign Ministry said that in response to the suppression of protests, Georgian Ambassador to Latvia Irakli Kurashvili was summoned to the Latvian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to hear the condemnation of Georgian authorities' violence and accept a protest note.

Latvia underlines that such acts violate Georgia's international duties, particularly to develop democracy and the rule of law in the country. Latvia calls on Georgia's authorities to immediately stop the violence, secure the safety and security of peaceful protestors, and bring the officials who committed these crimes to account, according to a statement issued by the Baltic state's Foreign Ministry.

Background:

Earlier on Monday, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis, who will soon leave office, ordered a prohibition on entry for certain Georgian officials.

Large-scale anti-government protests have been taking place in Georgia for the last several days after the authorities indicated that they would not be negotiating EU membership for the next four years.

Georgian security personnel employed severe measures against protesters, drawing censure from the West.

[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.

[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.

[amtitkosvergodese]

Kár, hogy nincs már DK árnyékkormány, a külügyi felelős tiltakozhatna a litvánoknál, hogy Orbán Magyarországot SEM képviseli.

[diogenesz2020portugal]

Még csak az országa nevében sem. Bár már tényleg a saját országa.