Ukraine must be able to use weapons delivered by the West to strike Russia, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said on Monday in an interview with the French channel LCI.
“We have to let go of all these limits we have set for ourselves”
“From the beginning, we have made the mistakes of limiting the Ukrainians (…) because it could be seen as an escalation,” he declared, regretting that the “state of mind” of Westerners was “dominated by fear of Russia.” According to the head of Lithuanian diplomacy, “the Ukrainians must be allowed to use the equipment provided to them so that they can achieve strategic objectives. They must be able to strike on Russian territory, supply lines, military units preparing to attack Ukraine.
Lithuania is among the countries that supported French President Emmanuel Macron when he refused to rule out sending Western soldiers to Ukraine. “There is only one side that imposes rules on itself. We must abandon all these limits that we have established for ourselves,” insisted Gabrielius Landsbergis. He also proposes sending back to Ukraine the instructors present before the Russian invasion, to speed up the training of kyiv’s forces.
“We could send the instructors back to Ukraine (…) who were already there (…). Lithuania is ready to join a coalition led for example by France, which would train soldiers in Ukraine.” He also suggests that “the French could really take a leadership position, deploying air defense elements in the Baltic states and then convincing other allies to manage rotations there.”
He also criticizes the idea of convincing China to influence Moscow to stop the war, seeing in it the risk of dependence on Beijing. “There is no free lunch, China will always demand a price. (…) By asking China to resolve a conflict in Ukraine, do we understand that in fact we are in handing over the keys to our security to China by not resolving the situation (…) For me this is an extremely dangerous approach,” he said.