Debate: This is Europe - Debate with the President of Lithuania, Gitanas Nausėda
Date: TUESDAY, 14 MARCH 2023
Speaker: Jaak Madison
Political group: ID
Country: France
Language: EN

If we just remind the history, it was pretty easy for Russia —  they called it the Soviet Union at the time but it was Russia, the same thing — to break down each country one by one because all those three countries, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, had their own some kind of policy. And for Moscow, it wasn’t very hard to have some kind of deals each by each. And the result we know pretty well and it’s just experience for the history. If you try to make some kind of deals with Satan, you are the loser from the beginning, there is no chance. To remind some of the necessity of the support to Ukraine. We all agree, most of us agree here. And there is different kind of ways to help Ukraine. But the most necessary definitely is military aid. As we can see in the news, the next weeks and the next months will be very crucial in Ukraine because both sides haven’t won. And if somebody’s saying that there is no winner in the war, there is. The winner can be only Ukraine, because if they lose we will be the next ones. And there is no question about that. As I looked just on the statistics, the resources, those three Baltic states have given the biggest military and financial aid to Ukraine. Estonia with 1%, Latvia with 0.98%, Lithuania with 0.65% of the GDP. And the fourth one is Poland with 0.63%. At the same time, there has been very huge help from the US and from the UK. But they can do more. And the problem for us now is that we really don’t have a lot yet to really give to Ukraine. But there are much more to give from the US, from the UK, also from Germany and France. Germany has given 0.17% of the GDP, France 0.07% of the GDP.  Those are just cold facts and numbers. And now the question is: are they really brave enough to make this change in the war or not? Because if we will lose this momentum now, in the next month, we will face the new war in the next two or three years. So just a moment to think which kind of chances we have if somebody is talking about the peace negotiations. The peace can be only if the conditions are good for us. And the only conditions that are good for us can be that there is no ambitions for Russia to start any kind of aggression in next decades. I will not say ‘forever’. We shouldn’t be very naive. Russia will not disappear. But the only thing what we can do is just to weaken them as much as possible and to show that they cannot win their neighbours. And finally, I would like to really thank you that Lithuania was one of the countries two years ago who showed how to deal with illegal migration. There is no question that if you are the war refugee, you need help. There is no doubt. But what we saw in Belarus, it was just illegal migration, what was used by Belarus for the hybrid attacks. And Lithuania, together with Poland, just shut down the border and said ‘there is no way to enter to the European countries through those countries illegally’, because if you open the border, there would be no ending, no ending at all. And you did absolutely well. So labai ačiū, thank you so much. And good luck for the Baltic cooperation.