Lithuanian president says Putin’s speech at UN ‘neo-Stalinist’

“I view the speech by President Putin as that of a leader who lives back in the 20th century and even more – a neo-Stalinist, which adores dictatorships, rebukes democracy and accuses the West for everything. This is the rhetoric we heard almost 100 years go, nothing has changed,” Grybauskaitė told New York journalists.

In her words, speeches by Putin and United States President Barack Obama showed that “the presidents came from different worlds” and that they “are still unable to get through to each other and understand each other”.

The almost non-existent outcome of a nearly two-hour meeting between leaders of the two most powerful countries is “not good”, said Grybauskaitė.

“This is not good, as there are many problems in the world. The West and the East, the two blocks cannot agree and cannot become closer, the warm-up did not happen,” said the Lithuanian president

In his speech at the UN on Monday, Putin criticized the West for “democratic revolutions” and stated that “rather than bringing back reforms… it has resulted in a brazen destruction of national institutions and the lifestyle itself”.

The nearly two-hour meeting between the leaders of Russia and the US in New York on Monday was the first in almost two years.