President Grybauskaitė: Lithuania needs to be united in wake of security threats

“As a small nation having such borders, with such a complicated situation in the security sense, and I have in mind not only military but also informational, cyber and all other kind of security, we must unite our forces – of politicians, public speakers and the media. It is very important not only to resist, to fight, not only to defend ourselves but to also be capable of presenting our way of understanding and our message,” the president said opening a conference on defence issues at the Presidential Palace in Vilnius on Friday.

Grybauskaitė also underlined the growing importance of the information sphere. “We see that very often conflicts start with informational tension, propaganda attempts and cyber attacks, and only afterwards, perhaps, but not always, they evolve into a conventional conflict and confrontation,” the head of state said.

The conference is also set to discuss the implementation of Lithuanian political parties’ agreement on foreign, security and defence policy guidelines until 2020.

Last year, seven major Lithuanian parties signed the document stipulating a gradual increase in defence spending that should reach 2 percent GDP by 2020 in line with NATO’s target.