R. Valatka. Quicksand

Russia greeted Lithuania with the centenarian February 16 by deploying Iskander rockets in Kaliningrad Oblast, which can also carry a nuclear payload. We found out about this on Monday, Rimvydas Valatka writes on LRT.lt.

It so coincided that the next morning RAIT survey results were published, showing that a whole 52% of respondents agree with “Farmer” Prime Minister S. Skvernelis‘ thought that Lithuania must, regardless of Russian actions, quickly improve relations with Russia.

The prime minister would like to restore the intergovernmental commission, regardless that this commissions activities were halted by Moscow itself seven years ago, before even the Crimean occupation.

The nuclear threat of Iskanders appearing near our borders and the prime minister’s wish, backed by half the nation, looks macabre.

The slogan “let’s not antagonise Russia” is so full of vitality it could be compared to quicksand. Looks beautiful from afar, but once you take a careless step, you suddenly find yourself neck deep.

But this “let’s not antagonise” is no surprise. There are such children to whom parents can say a thousand times not to touch the hot stove or to put a nail in the electricity outlet, but just wait for the mom to turn away and the little child once more cries, showing a singed finger. That’s the good relations with Russia through the prism of “let’s not antagonise.”

Thinking in European terms, it is rational to seek good relations with any neighbour, this including Russia and North Korea. The issue is that for Russia rational is only when there is unconditional submission to its imperialist policy.

Childish irrationality to touch hot stoves and the supposed rationality of the European left that good relations are needed with even Putin’s Russia is often just poorly disguised greed. The desire to earn from trade with a state controlled by the KGB mafia clan. Another million, another billion, regardless how many more people the bandits kill.

Thus it should come as no surprise that the PM, appointed by a party whose leader has been earning from trading impure Russian fertiliser for a quarter of a century, supplied by one of Putin’s closest friends Moshe Kantor, is trying to act lapdog to Russia.

This is not the first “Farmer” attempt to torpedo the clear and suitable Lithuanian foreign policy direction in relations with Russia.

Last year prior to February 16, two Seimas “Farmers“, Seimas first deputy Speaker Rima Baškienė and Agnė Širinskienė called for a press conference, the goal of which was to whitewash Putin’s Russia. “We’re picturing a terror: Russia that is evil. No such thing. There are many excellent things there that we are learning from,” R. Baškienė fervently spoke then.

You cannot say it more openly.

When a corrupts state led by a bunch of bandits, which bribes foreign politicians, performs cyber-attacks in order to influence electoral results or spreads propaganda filth across the world through Russia today, where opposition figures are being murdered en mass and where passenger planes are shot down with rockets, it is no longer the irrational naivety of a child, nor is it a rational desire to be friends.

Let’s identify it clearly. It is the poorly disguised desire to profit at Lithuania’s expense of figures who make use of politics for their businesses. This has nothing to do with political rationality.

Because there was no friendlier state to Moscow than the Lithuania of February 16. What did it end in? The rational generals and ministers who urged to not antagonise Moscow were all murdered and their wives and mothers with newborn grandchildren where expelled to Siberia to die.

Nevertheless half of Lithuania is inclined to forget history, continue to be fascinated by the quicksand “if Lithuania doesn’t antagonise.”

The Iskander rocket systems deployed in Kaliningrad show that the bandit clan’s Russia is not changing is aggressive policies. But the prime minister and 52% of Lithuanians have such childish illusions. And nothing costs so dearly when living next to Russia as do illusions.

It would be good if we thought with our own heads, not someone else’s on the eve of the centenarian February 16.