Lithuania: Europe ignoring Baltic warnings yet again: Grybauskaite

Europe said that the Baltic States were right about Russia, but is ignoring us again, Lithuania’s former president, Dalia Grybauskaite, said, LRT reports. Speaking at a conference on the war in Ukraine at Vilnius University, Grybauskaite noted that when Baltic politicians warned Western leaders after Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula in 2014, they were ignored, criticised, or ridiculed. Today, Western leaders acknowledge that the Balts were right, yet they still fail to listen, she said. NATO did not manage to deter Russia from going to war, but Western leaders have still failed to convince their societies that Russia poses an existential threat, Grybauskaite said. Moreover, if the upcoming NATO summit in Vilnius does not offer a clear path to membership for Ukraine, it will be another indication that the West has not learned from its past mistakes with Georgia and Ukraine, the former president argued. She warned that Russia would become increasingly aggressive in the coming decades.