Lithuania's Minister of Foreign Affairs Gabrielius Landsbergis participated in the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) forum “Winning the War: Winning the Peace”.

[Mr Secretary-General,

Mr President of the General Assembly,]

Ministers, Ladies and Gentlemen,

I would like to start by thanking Secretary-General Guterres, for laying out his vision for the future of global cooperation in Our Common Agenda, calling for inclusive, networked, and effective multilateralism.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania strongly condemns the so-called “elections” of governors, regional legislatures, city and municipal councils, organized by the Russian government and its collaborators on 8-10 September in the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine – the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol, as well as in parts of Zaporizhzhya, Donetsk, Luhansk and Kherson regions.

Today, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania summoned the Belarusian chargé d’affaires ad interim and handed him a diplomatic note, expressing a strong protest over violating the Lithuanian state border and destroying border guard infrastructure. Two persons illegally entered Lithuania from Belarus on 22 August. They possibly used cordless metal-cutting circular saws to cut off and demolish two video surveillance camera supports installed on the territory of Lithuania. They returned to Belarus afterwards.

11 July 2023, Vilnius

Ladies and gentlemen, good evening,and a warm welcome to the Grand Dukes‘ palace for this brief moment to wind down – so well-deserved yet so fleeting like a Lithuanian summer.

We started out with songs of the Forest Brothers – men and women who fought for Lithuania’s freedom against the Soviets in the 1940s and 50s. Tens of thousands were tortured and killed, hundreds of thousands exiled to Siberia and the GULAGs. Yet despite unspeakable oppression, their spirit kept the freedom flame alive during 50 years of the Soviet occupation and brought us to the restored Lithuania you all witness here today – proud, independent, free and at peace.

On 26 April, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania summoned the Russian Federation’s chargé d’affaires ad interim Alexander Elkin and expressed its strong protest over demolishing a monument to deportees from Lithuania and Poland, who are buried in Perm, Russia.

On 24 April, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania summoned Qu Baihua, China’s chargé d’affaires ad interim, and expressed its strong protest over the remark by the Chinese Ambassador to France of 22 April that the so-called ‘former Soviet countries’ had no actual status in international law.

On 28 March, after 11 hours of interinstitutional negotiations, the European Parliament, the Council of the European Union and the European Commission reached a provisional political agreement on a regulation on the protection of the Union and its member states from economic coercion by third countries (Anti-Coercion Instrument).

On 24 February, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania Gabrielius Landsbergis attended the OSCE Permanent Council's extraordinary meeting, strongly condemned Russia's ongoing aggression against Ukraine, and expressed full support for and solidarity with Ukraine.

We, the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Sweden and Ukraine, strongly condemn the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine that has caused enormous suffering to the Ukrainian people. It has also undermined security and stability in Europe and represents a serious attack on our rules based international order.