Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda said he will firmly advocate for extending European Union sanctions against Belarus. The EU is due to adopt another decision on the matter at the end of February.
“I will be among those who most decisively demand the extension of these sanctions,” Nausėda said on Žinių radijas.
He noted that Minsk remains an ally of Moscow, political prisoners continue to appear in Belarus, and hybrid attacks against Lithuania have not stopped.
“I have already said many times that this is far from the only sin of the Belarusian regime. And if they had been listed after the 2020 elections, it would have been a long list. However, perhaps the most important thing is that Belarus continues to arrest political prisoners. We cannot deceive ourselves into thinking that the release of some of them fundamentally changes anything, because at the same time twice as many new prisoners are being sent to jail. And another very important aspect is that Belarus is simply a staging ground for Russian operations against Ukraine.
And quite recently, President Zelenskyy, who visited Lithuania, said and confirmed that this is indeed the case, and that Ukraine assesses Belarus’s role in this war extremely negatively. Therefore, these important points must also be taken into account. Therefore, today I certainly cannot say that something so miraculous could happen that the Belarusian regime would suddenly stop being sinful. It continues to remain, in essence, a very close ally of Russia, and the struggle will continue as long as these fundamental reasons persist,” he said.
Nausėda once again confirmed that the U.S. side reacted sharply to the latest raid by smugglers’ weather balloons, which disrupted operations at Vilnius Airport.
“They reacted with truly harsh rhetoric and strong words. We will see what conclusions are drawn from this. However, if the Belarusian regime seeks to at least partially normalize relations, not with the European Union but at least with the United States of America, it should definitely avoid such signs of escalation,” he said.
Responding to a request to comment on statements by some Lithuanian officials and politicians about possible talks with Belarus or developing a strategy in the event of the resumption of potash fertilizer transit, Nausėda said that no discussions on easing sanctions with the United States are under way.
“The United States of America has never asked us to ease sanctions under any pretext. Also for the reason I mentioned earlier, that these are not Lithuanian sanctions, these are sanctions of the European Union, on the adoption of which Lithuania had significant influence. I do not deny this. Problems with commentators arise when they start commenting on hypothetical scenarios,” he said.
In particular, he commented on remarks by Seimas Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Remigijus Motuzas, who allowed for the possibility of talks with Belarus.
“As for Motuzas’s statement, there were probably considerations about what would happen if this were to occur. Today, reasoning about what would happen if this were to occur is simply not very responsible, because we have such a situation. It is real, not hypothetical, and it is unacceptable to us.
In addition, I would like to draw attention to the fact that Poland is now also being subjected to attacks by the same meteorological balloons. This means that the phenomenon is only spreading. And there is no basis to conclude from this that Lukashenka wants to somehow normalize relations with the Western community,” the Lithuanian president said.
Nausėda also noted that preparations are under way for sanctions in line with new criteria approved in the EU last year.
“Yes, sanctions are in fact being prepared. Sanctions may be applied to those individuals who are directly connected with the balloon flights. They do not themselves control these balloons, but they are responsible for the situation in the airspace and for what is happening in the skies of Lithuanian civil aviation,” he said.
