Lithuanian president says she trusts Merkel and rejects fears of “second Munich”

“I think these are speculations, very bad speculations. As far as I know Angela Merkel, I trust her in what she’s doing. She will never betray anyone, either Ukraine, or Germany, or Lithuania,” she said in an interview to the German TV channel Deutsche Welle.

Merkel and French President François Hollande last Friday discussed an initiative for peace in Eastern Ukraine with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkevičius said on Twitter on the same day, “‘Sudetenland’ in 1938 was supposed to appease [the] aggressor. We know the results. Why [are] these thoughts arising in time of Munich [Security] Conference 2015?”

He was referring to the Munich Agreement, a settlement that allowed Nazi Germany to annex Czechoslovakia’s border regions mainly inhabited by German speakers, known as the Sudetenland. The agreement was negotiated at a conference held in Munich in 1938 among Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and Italy.

Vytautas Landsbergis, Lithuania’s first head of state after independence from the Soviet Union, has also warned of “a second Munich.”

“Unofficial news from Brussels and Moscow is bad both to Ukraine and to the democratic Europe if two leaders – hardly duly mandated by the European Union – went [to Moscow] to bow to Vladimir Putin and approve of the capitulating Munich-2 line,” he said in a comment on DELFI.

Reportedly, the leaders of Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine are planning to meet in Belarus’ capital of Minsk on Wednesday to discuss a new peace plan for eastern Ukraine.

Western countries accuse Russia of arming pro-Russian separatists and sending troops to Eastern Ukraine.