Landsbergis urges Lithuania to confront real Russian threat

Former foreign minister Gabrielius Landsbergis has called public preparedness for a potential Russian threat the weakest link in Lithuania’s defence, LRT reported. He urged the government and opposition to make nationwide preparedness their top priority.

“There are no more important issues in Lithuania today,” Landsbergis said on LRT Radio’s Svarbus pokalbis programme.

Landsbergis said Russia’s threat was real and questioned the contradictory assessments coming from the country’s leaders. He referred to President Gitanas Nausėda’s warning more than a month ago that Lithuania was in a dangerous zone and could face attacks on strategic critical infrastructure in the autumn.

“The messages we hear today, that the level has not changed and there is no danger, do not fully fit together, because the information given a month ago has not been disproved,” Landsbergis said.

He said statements intended to reassure the public did not change the fact that the security situation was rapidly worsening. According to Landsbergis, there were reasons to believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin could take further action.

“We see from the latest news that he is escalating in Ukraine and escalating in Germany. We cannot rule out that he could do the same here,” he said.

“We need to take off the glasses of naivety and understand that the danger is real and exists. The only thing we can hope for is that we will find out before it happens that we may soon have to expect something,” Landsbergis said.

He also said that there could be more events in the future such as a visit by the CIA director to Moscow. While such developments were inevitably worrying, he said the first question should be what was being done to deter threats.

“The main question must be: what are we doing about it?” Landsbergis said, adding that every citizen who could take practical action should ask themselves that question. He said the government should also consider what it had done if further reports or attacks occurred the next day.

Calls for long term defence funding

Landsbergis welcomed the increased defence budget but said Lithuania needed long term and consistent defence financing. He said the military needed more time to prepare and guarantees that its funding would continue.

He compared military financing to a bank loan, saying that equipment orders required guarantees to lenders and manufacturers that funding would be available for five to 10 years.

Landsbergis said public preparedness for threats was currently the weakest part of the country’s defence. He added that the question of how citizens should act during a crisis had become a pressing issue, with various associations and organisations raising it.