WARSAW, Poland — Dalia Grybauskaite, the former Lithuanian president who served 10 years before leaving office in July, says nations like hers and Ukraine are stuck with Russia as neighbors. But it doesn’t mean that they have to give up or give in to Russian aggression.
The Baltic nation of 3 million people, a NATO member since 2004, is a case in point, she said, as she accepted the Knight of Freedom Award, a Polish international honor, given at the Warsaw Security Forum on Oct. 2.
She said that the danger from the Kremlin has moved from Western Europe, which used to get the biggest share of American troops, “toward our region, especially after the Crimean occupation” in 2014, referring to Russia’s invasion of the Ukrainian peninsula.
“We made awareness very high that the eastern flank of NATO is very important and needs to be invested into our security,” Grybauskaite told a dinnertime audience. “Now, in all four countries, Poland and the Baltic states there are 23 members of NATO represented, of course, in rotational form.”
She said that Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, “helped us in the way that we have no need to anymore repeat to our Western partners that our region is important, challenged and the neighbor is still predictably aggressive, and not only towards Ukraine, but predictably towards anybody who is not in line with their minds, their force, and not occupied or dependent.”
She said that Lithuania has “always been under pressure or economic blockade, or energy aggressive behavior with prices” from Russia. “Today we’re facing cyberattacks, annually, we’ve received 65,000 cyberattacks: electrical grids; government, nongovernmental organizations, even media is under cyberattacks; on TV, ideological attacks.”
She said that “in reality, we are in a non-conventional war, but conventionally, no. We are very clear in declaring together with our partners, that ‘no way, better not touch us. We are ready ourselves and we are ready with our partners to defend ourselves.’ That declaration is very clear and visible.”
But she said that “unconventional measures are very difficult to fight; for that, you need not only need not only to see the attack but need to understand and dismantle immediately.” She cited the fake allegation from Russia in 2017 that a German soldier, part of a NATO contingent serving in Lithuania, had raped an underaged Lithuanian girl. “We checked the name. There is no such name in Lithuania at all.”
Winning against the Kremlin’s unconventional warfare tactics “takes preparedness,” she said. “It takes the commitment of people to recognize lies and dismantle; it. That’s our everyday life. We know it. We know how to deal with it. It inspires us to be more secure and invest more in our security.”
She said “presidents are coming and going, of course, in democratic states,” which won applause and laughter. But while governments in democratic states are coming and going and changing,” the “strength of society” is often found in civic initiatives, she said.
“Our historical place we’re not able to change,” Grybauskaite said. “Of course it’s a pity our historical neighbor is still the same and behaves the same. Nothing changes in centuries. Today, we are used to having our state, our freedoms, sometimes interrupted. We are all the time fighting for it. We’re free. We’re democratic. We’re prosperous…We know how to fight back. With the support of the transatlantic partners, we all stay together and we are strong together. That’s our declaration to freedom. I am very happy you are so many here. You are studying our region. You know we are not afraid; we know where we live and we are proud of our freedoms, of our democracies and we’re proud of our people.”
The Knight of Freedom Award has been given annually since 2005 to “outstanding figures who promote the values represented by General Casimir Pulaski, a Polish statesman and military leader who only lived from 1745 to 1779, but who became a hero for fighting against Russian domination of Poland and later a hero while fighting for the American Revolution, where he was killed in battle.
