VILNIUS, Lithuania (AP) – Two brightly colored children’s scooters rest on the yellow tracks of a main battle tank parked in the shadow of skyscrapers in Vilnius’ business district. The area, which is usually crowded with cars, cyclists, and pedestrians, is closed to traffic and full of heavy armored vehicles.
“Lithuania has never been safer in its history,” says Jonas Braukyla, an IT engineer who took his family to see US-made Abrams tanks, German Leopards and Marders, and other military equipment brought in to protect the To demonstrate NATO’s power ahead of an alliance summit next week. “They even bring Patriot anti-missile missiles here. Now we must help our brothers and sisters in Ukraine and I hope the summit will bring good news for them.”
The two-day summit with US President Joe Biden and other NATO leaders, beginning Tuesday, will be the most significant international event Lithuania has hosted since joining the alliance in 2004, and some locals are hoping it will be of historic importance.
Others are less optimistic.
“The Vilnius summit will be important, but not historic. I doubt that the decision on Ukraine’s future will be precise and positive,” said Dalia Grybauskaite, former President of Lithuania.
Their skepticism reflects the belief, widespread in the Baltic countries, that even after Russia launched the biggest war in Europe since World War II, the West has never really understood the threat Moscow poses to the continent.
Grybauskaite earned the reputation of the “Iron Lady of the Baltics” for her determined leadership and openness, particularly towards Russia. She was European Union Budget Commissioner for five years before serving as President of Lithuania from 2009 to 2019. She was one of the few European leaders to warn of Russian meddling in Eastern Europe even before Moscow annexed Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula in 2014.
Today, she says, many Western leaders are still completely misguided about the Kremlin’s true intentions and lack the political will to respond accordingly.
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“After the occupation of Crimea, the response from the West was very slow, although Russia openly demonstrated in broad daylight that it could occupy the territories of neighboring countries,” Grybauskaite said in an interview with The Associated Press this week.
“We tried to explain to them what that meant, but we were criticized, laughed at and not believed. Today, most agree on who was right, but that no longer matters. What is even more worrying is that even now they are still hearing us but not listening.”
She said that many Europeans still don’t understand the value gap between Russia and the West. She dismissed as “delusional” the idea that both sides could find common ground through negotiations.
“It’s not just the war against Ukraine, it’s the fight against our entire civilization,” said the 67-year-old, who last week received the Manfred Wörner Medal, a prestigious German award for services to peace and freedom in Europe . “If Ukraine does not achieve ultimate victory on the battlefield, the West will end up in limbo. Aggressive actions against him will continue for decades to come.”
Dissatisfaction with Moscow runs deep in Lithuania and its Baltic neighbors Latvia and Estonia, all of which have suffered under Soviet occupation for five decades. Unlike many Western countries, they were skeptical about peaceful coexistence with Moscow even after the fall of the Iron Curtain.
Lithuania, bordered by Russian ally Belarus to the east and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad to the west, is investing heavily in its military and plans to spend 3% of GDP on defense in the near future – well above the NATO target. Its skies are patrolled by NATO fighter jets and Germany has pledged to station around 4,000 soldiers permanently in Lithuania. But critics fear that this would not be enough to protect the country if the war spreads beyond Ukraine.
Vytautas Landsbergis, Lithuania’s first head of state after regaining independence in the early 1990s, has ridiculed suggestions that an agreement could be reached with Russian President Vladimir Putin over Ukraine.
“As long as there is Russia, there will never be anything like ‘after the war.'” To put it bluntly, “after Russia.” Maybe then the world would have a chance,” he told reporters this week.
This way of thinking worries some NATO partners. French President Emmanuel Macron said earlier this year that the war in Ukraine must not become a campaign to “crush” the Russian Federation.
“I want Russia to be defeated in Ukraine and I want Ukraine to be able to defend itself. “But I am sure that in the end this will not be solved militarily,” Macron told French media at the annual Munich Security Conference in February. “I don’t believe, as some do, that Russia needs to be completely dismantled and attacked” on its territory. … That was never France’s position and never will be.”
The small Baltic countries are among the largest per capita donors of military aid to Ukraine. They are also among the most staunch supporters of inviting Ukraine to join NATO, another sensitive issue in the alliance. In Vilnius, where streets and squares have been decorated with blue and yellow Ukrainian flags for the summit, the agenda will include proposing a roadmap for Ukraine on its way to NATO membership.
“The accession process must begin because waiting for a post-war situation allows Putin to never end this war,” Grybauskaite said. “If we really care about the security of NATO territory, Ukraine must inevitably be part of it.”
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Associated Press writer Lorne Cook in Brussels contributed to this report.