Lithuania’s president supports new US sanctions for Russia at Tallinn meeting with Pence

At a meeting of her Baltic counterparts with US Vice-President Mike Pence in Tallinn, Grybauskaitė stated that the sanctions would diminish the possibility for Moscow to use energy resources as a measure of political pressure.

“I hope that president trump will support the decision for imposing the sanctions for the Kremlin policies using energy policy and products as a tool (of pressure),” Grybauskaitė told journalists in the Estonian capital.

She emphasized that Lithuania used to pay about 40 percent more for gas until the launch of the liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal, as Russia‘s gas giant Gazprom was the sole gas supplier to Lithuania.

US President Donald Trump is still to sign the amendments adopted by the country’s legislators, which are aimed at punishing the Kremlin for interference with the 2016 US presidential elections and the annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region.

Grybauskaitė said that Lithuania did not only hear but also saw the US commitments to the defense of the Baltic states.

“We see, not only hear how the United States is returning back strong to defend its NATO Allies,” said the Lithuanian president.

In an interview broadcast on the national radio LRT on Monday, Grybauskaitė said that the United States (US) would double the number of air-policing fighter-jets in Lithuania during the large-scale Russian-Belarusian military exercises Zapad 2017 this fall.

The NATO air-policing mission is currently conducted from Lithuania and Estonia by four fighter-jets in each country.