Baltic independence hero says West lacks resolve against Putin

VILNIUS — Vytautas Landsbergis, one of the organizers of a seminal Cold War-era demonstration for the freedom of the Baltic nations from the Soviet Union, now worries the lessons of that independence struggle have been lost on the West.
Interviewed by POLITICO in his home on the outskirts of Vilnius, Landsbergis, now 91, worries that the West still fails to recognize the full scope of the threat posed by Vladimir Putin — and is not doing enough to help Ukraine defeat Russian forces.
The notion that Putin can be defeated without a far greater effort, he said over tea and chocolate in his living room, is “suicidally naive.”
Landsbergis is considered a hero in Lithuania. A former music history professor, he helped organize the pivotal pro-democracy demonstration, held 35-years ago, known as the Baltic Way, when some two-million Latvians, Lithuanians and Estonians formed a human chain across the Baltics. That demonstration was itself held on the 50th anniversary of the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, which led, among other consequences, to the Soviet occupation of the Baltic states.
Landsbergis then went on to serve as Lithuania’s first head of state after it declared independence from the Soviet Union, and later represented the country as a member of the European parliament for a decade. His grandson, Gabrielius Landsbergis, currently serves as Lithuania’s foreign minister.
Germany’s history is one reason the country has a particular responsibility to help defend Europe from Putin’s aggression, according to Landsbergis. But German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, he said, has not been up to the task — and he has no qualms about expressing that view in strong terms.
Scholz “likely understands that Russia must be stopped,” said Landsbergis, but is not doing enough to actually stop Putin, making him “unconsciously an assistant to a killer.”
Germany has done more than any other European country to provide military aid to Ukraine — second only to the U.S. But the country has come under criticism of late for moving to slash Ukraine aid in a savings push. The German government defends the cuts, saying additional funding for Ukraine will come from a plan to use profits on frozen Russian assets.
“Germany will not let up in its support for Ukraine,” Scholz said during a visit to Moldova this week. “We will continue to support Ukraine for as long as necessary.”
In an effort to defend Lithuania from a potential Russian invasion, Germany is also moving to post 5,000 soldiers to Lithuania by 2027, marking Berlin’s first full-time foreign troop deployment since World War II.
But across Lithuania — a country where many people palpably fear a Russian invasion, and where Ukrainian flags hang from balconies as a ubiquitous sign of solidarity — those efforts are widely viewed as insufficient. Many want Germany’s Scholz to increase rather than slash aid to Ukraine, and to provide the country with long-range missiles — a move Scholz has adamantly refused, owing to fear it would provoke Putin.
“By cutting aid and not allowing the use of German high-precision weapons and being too cautious in too many ways, Chancellor Scholz believes that he is making prudent decisions,” said Ruslanas Iržikevičius, a prominent Lithuanian journalist and historian who also took part in the Baltic Way demonstration when he was just 16-years-old.
But the only way to prevent Ukraine from falling and having Russian forces on EU and NATO borders, he added, is to “give the Ukrainian military ability not only to defend, but to attack.”