'A 1938 moment': Lithuanian PM warns about Russian troops in Belarus

[L. Coyote]

My own perspective, Putin is pushing up the price of oil, trying to reap billions in excess profits, so he will be the last person to put an end to Russia making money they cannot survive without. A barrel of crude is already up 18% overone year ago. Not only does Putin profit immensley, he taxes the Western democracies he wants to weaken and negatively impacts the popularity of liberal leaders. But hey, I've been wrong before and Putin has annexed territory before, albeit not while Biden was president.

The security landscape of the Baltic states and eastern Europe may be changed permanently if Russian troops amassed on the Ukraine border start to integrate with Belarusian troops, Lithuania’s prime minister has said.

“This is a 1938 moment for our generation,” Ingrida Šimonytė said in an interview. “Neutrality helps the oppressor and never the victim.”

Šimonytė, who is due to meet Boris Johnson on Tuesday, is one of the European politicians most willing to make a case for democracy and expose the methods of autocracies.

Her stance has led her country of only 2.8 million people on to the frontline of ideological conflict not only with Russia but also China.

Belarus is threatening to block potash exports to her country, and China punished Lithuania for the opening of a Taiwanese representative office in Vilnius by cutting trade and pressing companies to pull out of Lithuania. The UK has joined Lithuania to take China to the WTO over its behaviour. .............. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/08/a-1938-moment-lithuanian-pm-warns-about-russian-troops-in-belarus

Link to tweet

[Wounded Bear]

1. This is very much analogous to the 1938 Munich meetings...

where the Western Democracies failed to stand up to Hilter and basically gave Czechoslovakia to him, with the Czechs not even at the table. France and Britain signed away the Sudetenland, which, while it had a large German populace, it also had most of the defensible frontier of the nation. Hitler marched in and took the rest a few months later, which meant that Germany surrounded Poland on 3 sides prior to the 1939 invasion.

So far, Biden has managed it fairly well. While NATO might not be 100% behind the President, they have stood strongly against Russian expansionism so far.

[Sur Zobra]

2. Simonyte's insightful comment

on neutrality hits the nail on the head. All the democracies in the world need to take a strong stand against Putin, or woe be to all of us.