In her annual speech on Wednesday, President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen said Brussels should have listened to the warnings on Russia from the Baltic states and Poland.
“One lesson from this war [in Ukraine] is we should have listened to those who know Putin,” said von der Leyen.
“To Anna Politkovskaya and all the Russian journalists who exposed the crimes, and paid the ultimate price. To our friends in Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, and to the opposition in Belarus. We should have listened to the voices inside our Union – in Poland, in the Baltics, and all across Central and Eastern Europe,” she said, adding that “they have been telling us for years that Putin would not stop”.
In the State of the Union speech, she said the Baltic states have acted on their warnings, ending their dependency on Russia.
“They have invested in renewable energy, in LNG terminals, and in interconnectors,” von der Leyen said. “This costs a lot. But dependency on Russian fossil fuels comes at a much higher price.”
“We have to get rid of this dependency all over Europe,” she added.
Lithuania built the floating LNG terminal, called the Independence, in 2014, which ended Gazprom’s monopoly on the country’s gas supply. Vilnius also became the first in the EU to end all Russian oil imports after the February 24 invasion of Ukraine.
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