Lithuania's Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis has called for EU sanctions on Russia in response to the arrest of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.
"Lithuania will immediately raise the issue of possible EU response and new sanctions on Russia over Navalny detention and persecution,” he said in a statement.
His comments came after a separate, joint statement issued by the Baltic foreign ministers on Sunday, saying that "we need to consider imposition of restrictive measures in response to this blatant act”.
Joint statement by 🇪🇪🇱🇻🇱🇹: Detaining Alexei @Navalny by the Russian authorities is completely unacceptable. We demand his immediate release. EU should act swiftly and if he is not released, we need to consider imposition of restrictive measures in response to this blatant act”
— Gabrielius Landsbergis (@GLandsbergis) January 17, 2021
"We demand his immediate release,” the foreign ministers of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania said in a tweet. “The EU should act swiftly and if he is not released, we need to consider the imposition of restrictive measures in response to this blatant act,”
Lithuania's President Gitanas Nausėda and Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė also condemned the arrest.
"The appalling arrest of Russian opposition leader Navalny as soon as he returns home is just another evidence of Kremlin's efforts to systematically abuse human rights and democratic freedoms. The Western democracies must not tolerate this!" Nausėda tweeted.
"If anyone were still having illusions of the Kremlin sanity, they must have finally vanished just now as the whole world is following live from Sheremetyevo," Šimonytė tweeted.
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