Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said the removal of not only Vladimir Putin, but the entire regime that supports him is necessary to stop Russia’s “warmongering” and predicted the Kremlin leader will become increasingly erratic as his battlefield losses grow in Ukraine.
Speaking to CNN in Washington on Tuesday, Landsbergis also said his nation is seeking a permanent US troop presence, calling it “the biggest deterrent to an aggressor like Russia,” as well as fortified support from NATO at next month’s leaders’ summit in Madrid.
Lithuania has been a strong supporter of Ukraine since the start of the war more than two months ago and has pushed for a robust response to counter Russia, becoming the first country in the European Union to stop Russian gas imports.
Landsbergis said the United States and European allies have thus far been focused on their “tactical approach” to the war in Ukraine, responding to the developments on the ground.
However, the foreign minister stressed that they also need to think strategically about the longer-term — and until Putin and his enablers are gone, the world needs to be prepared that Russia “might war again, and not excluding NATO countries.”
“There are countries that are expecting that we just have to wait it out and kind of wait for the war to be over and then we’ll get back to the business as usual,” Landsbergis said, who argued that “Russia is out of the civilized world order … they no longer belong in this.”
“Russia’s warmongering state will be over when the regime is over in Russia. That’s the only way that we see it,” he said.
Landsbergis did not suggest the West should take concrete action to remove Putin from power and acknowledged that “it might take quite some time for it to change, because we don’t have any active means to change it. So it needs to change from within.”
Moreover, Landsbergis explained it would not be enough just for Putin to no longer lead Russia because “it’s a whole system.”
“Putin might be sick, he might be pushed aside by his inner circle — who’s probably quite unhappy about the losses in the battlefield — but that doesn’t mean that the regime will change or its attitude, the war mongering attitude will change,” he said, saying it was reminiscent of Nazi Germany.
Landsbergis told CNN that Putin’s Victory Day speech on Monday suggested there may be discontent among that inner circle about Russia’s failures in the war, saying it was “fascinating” that the Russian President “tried to explain” why he started the war in those remarks.
