„Putin is losing the war, and that is clear. (...) The perception is now so ambivalent that Putin is indeed losing the war at the moment, but he cannot lose. That is the idea, which is still floating around somewhere in France or Germany, which is very dangerous and wrong, the idea of justifying any dictator's madness on the grounds that there is no way he can lose. In fact, the attitude should be the opposite: he can and must lose. The West simply has to realise that it is not defending Ukraine, but itself, its entire civilisation“, Landsbergis told Žinių radijas on 29 September.
The first leader of restored Lithuania hopes that sooner or later, all Western countries will realise that Putin cannot change. That is why, he urges, talk with the Kremlin should stop.
„How much can you pretend that you don't see and understand? There is no talking to a madman, and there is only a clinic or a handcuffed, shirtless person“, he added.
V. Landsbergis: I don't think that A. Palecki's „gang“ could find wide support in Lithuania
V. Landsbergis, Chairman of the Supreme Soviet-Seimas-in-creation, does not think that supporters of Algirdas Paleckis, convicted of spying for Russia, could gain wider support in Lithuania and cause dangerous riots in the country.
„I do not imagine that a gang of Paleckis could get any large and widespread support and cause dangerous riots in Lithuania. Lithuania has had so much experience and has so much sense that it would not go down such a road to vote for them in the elections“, Landsbergis told Žinių radijas.
According to the professor, it is very important that other Western countries, where pro-Putin sentiments are much more pronounced, decide on a tougher stance toward Russia.
„More important actors need to decide. Will Germany make a final decision with all its alternatives to Putin, its Schröderisms, and its huge bribes? They have put their country under the energy dependency of this monster. And the SPD (Social Democratic Party of Germany – ELTA) is not even able to clean itself up – to throw Gerhard Schröder out of the party,“ he underlined.
V. Landsbergis stresses that a victory for Putin in this war he has started would be a global catastrophe.
„There are complexities everywhere. We do not know whether the Russian girls will be walking around for a long time wearing 'Я хочу Put Put Putin' T-shirts, promising to make him soldiers, just as the Germans once promised Hitler and Hitler hoped until the last moment that he would still win,“ emphasised Mr Landsbergis.
„But a new Hitler should not win. It would be a global catastrophe. But he cannot be left behind, and he will not change. So the only thing to do is to finish him off“, he added.
ELTA recalls that at the end of July, representatives of the International Forum for Good Neighbourliness, founded by A. Paletskis, visited the Russian Federation and met with representatives of the Russian authorities. Erika Švenčionienė, the association leader, said that she wanted to break the information blockade and ask for a visa-free regime for Lithuanian citizens to enter the Kaliningrad region. During the visit, doubts were raised about the legitimacy of the election of the current Lithuanian government, accusing those in the power of causing economic damage and frightening its citizens about a possible Russian invasion.
Earlier, Paleckis' supporters visited Belarus, where they met with the leader of the regime, Aliaksandr Lukashenko, and expressed their support for Minsk.
V. Landsbergis: Fleeing Russians can become a weapon against the countries that receive them
Russians fleeing mobilisation could become a weapon against their host countries, says Landsbergis, Lithuania's first de facto leader since independence.
„Now they are fleeing to somewhere safer, but the question is whether this mass flight is not also planned and is not another ugly weapon – to bring tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of strangers who have been brought up in the Putinist state and who will not be any kind of Georgian patriots to somewhere like Georgia. They will use them for some referendums, votes, to ask for help from Uncle Putin“, said the former Chairman of the Supreme Soviet-Seimas-in-Office.
Following Russian President Vladimir Putin's announcement of partial mobilisation last week, migration flows of Russians of draft age to Sakhartvel have almost doubled.
On Tuesday, Sakartvel's Interior Minister Vakhtang Gomelauri said that the number of Russian citizens entering the country on a daily basis has recently reached around 10 000 per day.
The influx of Russians has caused mixed feelings in Sakartvelo, where painful memories of the Russian invasion of 2008 still linger. On Wednesday, the opposition staged a protest against the influx.
V. Landsbergis urged the West not to react to Putin's threats, saying that it did not matter.
„What matters is what they do,“ the former Lithuanian leader said.
He also said that Lithuania must trust world leaders who are determined to „grind Russia into flour“ in the event of nuclear war.
Russia has been waging war in Ukraine for more than seven months. Last week, commenting on the alleged referendums in the occupied territories of Ukraine, Putin warned that Moscow would use all possible means to defend „Russian sovereignty“.
He implied that the Kremlin could use strategic nuclear weapons to counter possible Ukrainian attempts to regain territory.
