Lithuania will not recognise elections organised by Russia in the occupied and annexed territories of Ukraine, President Gitanas Nausėda has said.
“We also do not and will not recognise the elections that Russia is planning to hold in the temporarily occupied and illegally annexed territories of Ukraine. Lithuania strongly supports Ukraine’s independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity within internationally recognised borders,” he told participants of the international platform on the release of civilians illegally detained by Russia.
Russia will hold regional and presidential elections this year, and the Kremlin also intends to organise them in annexed and occupied regions of Ukraine. Observers say Russia’s presidential election will not be fair because all key opposition politicians are banned from running.
According to Nausėda, one of the features of the Russian occupying regime in Ukraine is threatening all civilians with arbitrary detention, torture, and death.
“No Ukrainian today, not even children, is safe in the territory occupied by Russia,” he said.
The Lithuanian president also called the illegal deportation of thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia and Belarus “a particularly shocking genocidal attempt to erase Ukrainian identity”.
Lithuania will continue calling for the establishment of a special international tribunal to investigate the crime of aggression and to create a mechanism for compensating Ukraine, he stressed.
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