Lithuania’s former President Dalia Grybauskaitė argues that by proposing to hold direct talks between Moscow and Kyiv, Russian President Vladimir Putin is merely stalling for time and is not in fact interested in ending the war in Ukraine.
“I believe these are games for the time being, an attempt to stall for time, an attempt to shift the blame to the Ukrainian side, but in fact they are stalling for time and are unwilling to end the war now, at least in the near future as they want to occupy as much of Ukraine as possible,” Grybauskaitė told reporters on Monday.
Over the weekend, four European leaders visited Kyiv and demanded that Russia agree to a one-month ceasefire to pave the way for peace talks. Instead, Putin made a counter-proposal to hold direct talks between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul on Thursday.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Sunday he was willing to meet Putin in person in Turkey.
Earlier, the Ukrainian leader said a ceasefire was a precondition for the Istanbul talks.
‘No need to fear’ nuclear weapons
Grybauskaitė also argued that nuclear deterrence is irrelevant in modern warfare.
“As far as nuclear deterrence is concerned, I would say that nuclear deterrence is an obsolete doctrine. Nuclear deterrence was effective after World War Two, during the Cold War, but not now,” Grybauskaitė told reporters on Monday.
“No umbrella will help because now we have completely different weapons, a completely different nature of war. Nuclear weapons will not scare anybody,” she said, noting that there are other threats now that are more dangerous than nuclear weapons.
Last November, Russian President Putin signed an updated version of the country’s nuclear doctrine that eased restrictions to allow using nuclear weapons to respond even to a conventional attack backed by a nuclear power.
Over the weekend, Putin insisted that there was no need for the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine, expressing his hope that there would be no such need.
“There is no need to fear and there is no need to pay attention as it is an obsolete instrument and there is nothing to fear. The Russians may be afraid of nuclear weapons themselves, so let them be afraid,” Grybauskaitė said.
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