Landsbergis decries “toxic” tactic of leaving Russia undefeated, ready for future partnership

That’s according to Gabrielius Landsbergis, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania, who shared his opinion in a thread of tweets, Ukrinform reports.

“Why aren’t we sending Ukraine all the tools needed to end the war? Why are we avoiding specifics during the debate on Ukraine‘s membership of NATO? Because the belief is still alive that after the war we can return to business as usual, as if February 24th was just a glitch,” Landsbergis said.

“The tactic of leaving Russia undefeated and ready for future partnership is toxic. It leads to calls to end the war by negotiation instead of ending it with a Ukrainian victory. Some even suggest Ukrainian territorial concessions to the invaders as a gift. That isn’t how the rules-based international order works. Russia shouldn’t get invited to ‘peace’ negotiations as a reward for brutally invading, occupying and murdering its neighbours again and again,” the top diplomat tweeted.

He lamented that the creeping normalization of Russia's actions is “fundamentally wrong,” criticizing as “misguided” the belief that the current security architecture of multilateral regional and global organizations must be preserved as the “best we have.”

International organizations “completely failed to prevent conflict of a magnitude unseen in Europe since WW2.”

“At the very least there must be change within those organizations. But we should not rule out the possibility of some organisations disappearing and new ones forming. With previous conflicts in Europe, the security architecture was rethought after the fighting ended, new structures appeared. For example, the United Nations appeared after mistakes made during the League of Nations era,” Landsbergis suggests.

The foreign minister stresses that first of all, “Russia has to face defeat on the battlefield.”

“For that Ukraine needs all our help. All the weapons, all the assistance we can give. Otherwise Russia will continue trying to reinvent the continent according to its own imperialist world vision. It is in Europe's interest to fight off and defeat the invader. After this defeat a new system needs to be created out of the lessons learnt from previous mistakes,” the minister noted.

“Reliance on economic exchange as a principle of mutual assurance, desecuritization, veto power on security issues given to the aggressors – these are some of the misconceptions which failed to ensure the safety of the continent,” he went on to say. “Our strategy needs to be rethought and reflected in a new security architecture that will ensure the safety of the continent for decades to come.”

The West “should start creating this new system with Ukraine, not with Putin’s Russia,” Landsbergis concluded.

As reported earlier, the Institute for the Study of War in its latest report noted that French President Emmanuel Macron in a televised interview on December 3 amplified Russian information operations about the need for NATO to consider “security guarantees” to be given to Russia during putative negotiations.