Lithuanian statesman and politician, former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania, Gabrielius Landsbergis, regularly participates in public discussions on the Russo-Ukrainian war. From September 2025, he is set to join a fellowship at Stanford University (USA) and continue to research the impact of history on the present.

He spoke in an interview with Ukrinform on the biggest security threats facing Lithuania and the Baltic States, how the Ukrainian experience of waging a full-scale war can be useful to Lithuanians, and how Ukraine can strengthen NATO’s defense capabilities.

SECURITY GUARANTEES FOR EUROPE ARE BEING FORGED IN UKRAINE

- In the latest issue of your newsletter, you write that the security guarantees Europe are, in fact, being forged in Ukraine, and you also offer an assessment of Ukrainian innovations as a tool to counter the Russians. Could you share your thoughts on this?

- You know how Ukraine is able to maintain the front, while knowing the situation on the Western side where we are extremely slow and you know we give extremely little, so that’s what is happening throughout my trips to Ukraine where I have been meeting quite a lot of companies that are developing the technologies for the defense effort. I have this theory, because there is no other way for me to test it, because I cannot go to the front, that Ukrainians are doing that basically on their own. That most of the defense of Ukraine is happening with the Ukraine-developed technology. 

And yesterday's attack on the strategic fighters in Russia was the perfect example of how this is done. I mean, even without the intelligence that would be provided by the West, without any support, a third of Russian air fleet capacity, nuclear capacity, has been destroyed. That's incredible. No amount of START treaties or anything that West has been doing for decades even came close. 

So my main point in my newsletter is basically, when I hear people saying: “Oh, you know Ukraine cannot join NATO because we're not ready to give you security guarantees”, when I think about my country I wish that we would be able to get security guarantees from Ukraine. If we are worried that Russians might attack us, I would be much calmer knowing that Ukrainians would be fighting together with us and securing this part of Europe. That is, I think that is a new reality that not many people are still really embracing.

- Some Western leaders keep thinking or keep saying that, for example, let's not help Ukraine more or we could make Putin more aggressive, more angry. Do you think this operation Spiderweb shows that you're allowed to make Russia more aggressive and it's okay to do such things and that it understands only such language of power? 

- To me it tells one thing that we don't have as much leverage on Ukraine as some of the Western leaders thought. That means that Ukraine is controlling the escalation on its own, it's not asking for permission to control it, but it will do what needs to be done. Of course, it is possible to perceive that there will be Russian retaliation in some way but there's always Russian retaliation, right? As we've seen on the horrendous attacks on the civilian infrastructure.

But the path is to tell Russians that there will always be a price for them.  Whatever they're doing, Ukraine can extract the price. And I think that somewhere down that line is the price that Russians would not be able to pay. And I've used the example of Finland during the winter war, the first war that Stalin fought against Finland and Finns have managed to do so much damage to Russians that basically for them it became a strategic dilemma: if you continue fighting in Finland you will start losing against any future adversary. For them, that was Germany. Then in 1940s, the war was not going on yet. But I mean, they were thinking this, that if you bring all your troops there, you are open elsewhere. 

So these things are might possibly be happening in Russia right now. If you continue fighting with Ukraine, well, you start losing your advantage against the United States, because you won't have enough bombers, and you're not making them. That means that is a limited resource. And if Ukrainians are able to destroy them, who knows? I mean Russia is weaker against Ukraine today, but against United States – during this weekend.

IF UKRAINE DECIDES TO LEAD A REGIONAL SECURITY ALLIANCE, WE WILL BE INTERESTED

- On June 2, Vilnius was holding a summit. How do you evaluate its results? Have you heard any statements that were of high importance to you? 

-The Nordic region plus eastern flank, apart now from two countries, namely Hungary and Slovakia, understands the risks of Russia's success in Ukraine the best. Baltics and Poland, you know, to a high degree, and Nordics, we do understand what's at stake here. So I think it is important to get this group together and show that for us, nothing has changed – we continue to stand with Ukraine and do what we can. And that, possibly, creates a more difficult challenge than for our bigger allies, to change the opinion, if they would ever try to do that. What is a bit different is that I mentioned two countries whose position is incompatible basically with the rest of the group, and there are tensions already. We've seen tensions in Romania with a close win of one candidate (approx.ed. pro-Russian candidate Călin Georgescu). 

Now Poland has elected the president who is much more critical against Ukraine and then promises not to help Ukraine at least not at the level that has been in in the past. So I mean we are seeing tension so maybe these meetings try to stabilize the situation and show the group that we can still do things together as much as we can today.

- NATO General Sercetary Mark Rutte reassured once again that Ukraine will eventually become a NATO member, but also do you see that there is also a space here for new original security alliances?

- I absolutely do. I mean the situation is very different than it was two years ago when Vilnius organized a NATO summit, so then for Ukraine  NATO membership seemed like a fast path to be able to stabilize the situation and ensure that Russians are no longer attacking. Now we see Ukraine with the biggest army in Europe, it is the only country that has fought Russians and has been basically successful in fighting off, to an extent, of course. It is very difficult to imagine that any one of us could withstand the full power of Russia so Ukraine is enormously successful in this and, if Ukraine would choose to lead as some sort of a regional security grouping, I am pretty much convinced that the countries around Ukraine would be interested so we escape from this loop of death about whether Ukraine would become part of NATOwWhen Americans don't want it or Germans are not sure. 

- It's been going on and on since 2008. Now, ask the countries in the region, would you like better to fight Russians with Ukrainians or without Ukrainians? And I'm pretty convinced that everybody will tell if Ukrainians would agree to fight with us, well, we would do anything. 

NAÏVE TO BELIEVE RUSSIA WANTS PEACE

- A few months ago, with the talk with my colleagues from Voice of America, you were discussing several scenarios of possible end of this Russo-Ukrainian war. There was an optimistic scenario and a pessimistic one. We still see that despite some successful operations like “Spiderweb”, Russians are really active at the moment on the battlefield.  https://www.ukrinform.ua/rubric-world/3999817-istoricna-operacia-sbu-pavutina-kriz-prizmu-svitovih-zmi.html So which scenario are you seen as the likeliest? 

- In order to have a successful scenario, still I think that certain conditions need to be met. And what we are seeing now is that Ukraine, with its industrial output currently and with a limited support from the West, is able to what you could call stabilize the front. But I if there could be an opportunity to increase Ukrainian ability to produce weapons, let's say 10 times, right? With that ability, just “stabilize” becomes an ability to push back or to deter Russians. If Russians would know that Ukraine has 10 times more weapons, in that case the price for Russians to continue becomes too high. This is the one of the best paths in my mind to more successful scenarios. 

There are questions unanswered. For example, one of the questions is would Russians be able and ready to call on much larger mobilization than they currently have? It's a very dangerous scenario. And so far, Putin has been reluctant to do that. Maybe his population is not convinced that they would be willing and ready. They don't want another wave of people leaving Russia. 

So every single couple months he would gather around another 100,000, which is, again, an enormous number for Europe, in our minds. But then again, it allows him to walk this very narrow path, not calling the mobilization and not angering the people too much, but still be able to reinforce the front. 

If he would change that, that would in turn create an enormous dilemma for Ukraine. How to keep on fighting if Russians really are throwing everything that they can. So, I mean, the battle is not yet won. We're not there yet. I mean that the main thing is that we need to continue pressing for Western support. That we have to be serious. We have not been serious until now.

- On June 2, we had another round of so-called negotiations in Istanbul. Do you think that Russia can hold to any sustainable peace without being accountable for what they have done before? Its war crimes and so on.

- I'm extremely pessimistic when it comes to peace with Russia. My calculation is that Russia has to lose in order to admit any sort of conditions that it would not like. If it wants a whole Ukraine and if it's not losing, or at least it believes that it's not losing, then they will continue. Their current losses at the battlefield they might think are sustainable, that’s it's fine and they can manage it. Of course, it's good that Ukrainians are having peace talks, but believing Russia wants peace in this relation that's just naive.

SECURITY DISCUSSIONS IN LITHUANIA REMIND ME OF UKRAINE IN 2021

- How do you evaluate transatlantic relations between the United States and Europe considering the fact that world order has changed, whether we want it or not?

- You know, the United States is in a very strange position right now, where many  people see them as much more supportive of Putin's regime, rather than to the world order that helped them to become strongest and richest country in the world, which is a very strange thing, right? 

So basically, it's like they are betting against themselves. There is a famous saying that you never bet against the United States. And it looks like their own country, their own leadership is betting against their country, harming the very principles that allow them to be where they are currently. You know, they benefit from Europe being safe. They would benefit from Ukraine being in EU and NATO. They would benefit. Even financially, people are extremely pragmatic, much more than from the minerals deal. 

They would really benefit if there was actually no war and Russia is somewhere quietly sitting in its place. There have been a number of promises of sanctions on Russia. Nothing has happened. You know, we're always hearing that two more weeks are given to Putin, two more weeks to kill people, two more weeks to shoot at the innocent civilians. And unfortunately, you know, at this stage, we have to learn to live as if we're without the United States, and we're living without the United States. Keep the door open, hope that they will return, that that might happen, that should happen, I hope. 

- If we're talking about Lithuania's state security, what from Ukraine's experience could be useful in terms of both positive experience, innovations, and also negative experience, what we missed before this full-scale offensive?

- That's a good question. So first of all, when it comes to the positive, I would say that Ukraine is an example of how the wars are being fought if they are not fought with United States’ backing. Because all NATO plans, everything that we have, all the strategies are based on the very simple fact that you always have United States behind your back. You control the skies, you control the logistics, you have enormous supplies of ammunition and everything that you need. This is how United States would fight the war. And Ukraine is showing that, okay, in some cases, United States is just not there. And you have to fight the war on your own. And who knows that in case of attack against a NATO country, especially the small ones in the Eastern flank, how fast would the United States join the battle? And how long should we need to fight on our own? 

And this is where Ukrainian lessons are invaluable, because my thinking is that the battle for Vilnius would be very similar, like the battle for Kyiv, although it is smaller and we don't have that many kilometers between us and Russians, so it would be a bit more difficult.  

Now the things that we would not like to repeat is find ourselves a bit in a similar position like Ukraine in the end of 2021 when there was an absolute denial of possibility of an attack. We had conversations with ambassadors and ministers and leadership of the country and everybody were like, you know, officially we agree that there could be an attack but then privately they would say: “Look it's just nonsense, these things don't happen like that and all of it is harming our economy”. And now when I hear if somebody raises this question in Lithuania like are we prepared now, do we have enough ammunition, people say: “Oh, let's not talk about that because it really harms our economy”. And I said we gave advice to Ukrainians to switch off that thinking for a while about the economy and think about the existence of the country, that was a good advice in 2021.  I wish somebody would give us the same advice now.

- Lithuania has this militarized zone from Russian side, Konigsberg (or Kaliningrad), which is bordering Lithuania and some experts say that so far that Ukrainians will be holding Russian army here in Ukraine, they will not be able to perform another attack on another part of somebody’s sovereign territory? Is it so in your opinion?

- Well, you're right that, if Russians have to maintain the huge military forces in order to either continue moving in Ukraine or just to continue holding what they have right now. So that means for them to organize any sort of operation elsewhere, it is much more difficult. Just because if they move troops, you know, from Donbas to Belarus, that means that Ukrainians would start pushing them in that direction. But in case there is a ceasefire, they don't need that much military personnel to guard the contact line. 

This is where they will have to answer a very important question, right? So what do you do with all those people? Do you demobilize them? Most of them are either with criminal past or with criminal inclinations. I've just been through the briefing where I was told that up to 20% of the Russian military force, when demobilized, is criminally leaning. So out of 1.5 million people, 20%, that's not so little. 350,000 people that would potentially join either criminal gangs, or do some violence, or steal. So that's a difficult question for any country leader to answer, what do you do here? This is why it would be rationally explainable if he would decide to continue with some sort of a war. And if we allow that opportunity, who knows if he's not going to take it. 

RUSSIAN NARRATIVES OF “BROTHER NATIONS” IS A PRECURSOR TO WAR

- Russia started its war against Ukraine with hybrid operations, informational operations. And Lithuania may be one of the countries who understands it best, because you also see this kind of operations. From your experience, to other NATO allies, what could be useful in countering this Russian disinformation?

- Not everybody understands the subtle nuances of what Russians are saying. I mean, I've heard so many people misunderstand the Russian concept that Ukrainians and us are basically “just one nation, we're brothers and sisters”, you know. And to the untrained ear, to a person who is not a historian or a diplomat it sounds like maybe it's a nice thing, right? People just want to live together, they're so close and they have so much of a shared history. But then you understand that it's an erasing of your identity. That's a precursor to war. 

And I mean, this is one of the most dangerous things that you can hear from Russians. So now, when they released one of their history books with Lavrov's introduction about Lithuania, where they are saying again that we've enjoyed our time together, for us it sounds like, okay we've heard that before in Ukraine and it's a very dangerous narrative that the Russians are trying to spread. What we can do? There's an excellent Ukrainian historian called Sergey Plokhiy from Harvard. Now he's in the  United states and I try to advertise his book because basically this is his subject. 

He is teaching everyone in the West and explaining what is really happening in the region, why it is important, who denied whom you know when the Soviet Union split, we need this in-depth training so that at least the decision makers and those who care would understand what is really going on and what really Russian goals are.  It happens as the Russians try to convince Western people that it is their story that is “the only right one”.

- By the way, according to Petro Andriushchenko, former advisor to the mayor of Mariupol and currently head of the "Center for Mariupol Occupation," the Russians — who completely destroyed the  city and then rebuilt several districts for propaganda purposes — are not allowing the remaining Ukrainians in the city to move into those refurbished areas. The older generation in the Baltic States faced something similar during the Soviet occupation, when people were evicted from their homes and never allowed to return...

- Yeah, we had more than 200,000 people that were deported to Siberia. And when under Khrushchev they were allowed to return, they had to choose any other place than their own, than the one that they left from, just to deny them the ability to live where they left from, where they’d lived before the war. Not the Homeland, but basically home.

- What would be your response to certain Western democracies who consider themselves to be neutral in the face of Russian aggression?

- It's fake. I mean, nobody is neutral in this. There is no gray zone in this. You're always choosing. If you're choosing neutral, that means you're choosing Russia. I'm sorry.

UKRAINE HAS CARDS

- Mr. Landsbergis, you were invited to Stanford University. Could you tell us more about what you plan to teach there?

- Well, it's not actually teaching. I've received a fellowship proposal, this is not just a focus on teaching. You can teach, you can write a book, you can study if you want. So if all goes well, from September, I will be a fellow at Stanford University.

- What would be your main messages that you would want to share there with your colleagues and general public? 

- As a person who studied history I'm very much keen on telling the story of our region. I can tell about my country, which has a lot of shared history with Ukraine, Poland, and other countries in the region. And, of course, it is important to tell what needs to be done these days.

- And what do we need to do now? 

- Not to lose hope, I know it sound metaphysical, but that is a very important thing.  Because it is so easy. And we've been in this business for a very long time, we thought that Kyiv will fall in three days and we thought you know that Ukrainians are unable just to build anything without our western support, and when President Trump said that “Ukraine does not have any cards”, this is exactly the thing that we need to avoid. Because we do have cards. And Ukraine has a lot of cards. And they're playing them really well.

Anna Kostiuchenko

Photo from Ukrinform