Šimonytė spoke about this on Tuesday evening at a series of discussions with presidential candidates organised by the Centre for East European Studies.
Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė, when asked about the statements made by presidential candidate Vaitkus during the debates on LRT television on Monday, first noted that recently, the narrative from the Kremlin has emphasised discussions about seeking peace.
„The Kremlin's main narrative now is probably very cynical, cunning and manipulative, which is that we are for peace. Because the natural state of man is that he is for peace, because who can be for war if you are sane? No one. This person is for peace, and then he seems to be saying something that somehow correlates with you, even though he is not talking about peace, but about something that never leads to peace,“ said Šimonytė.
According to Prime Minister, this is the kind of narrative reflected in the speeches of presidential aspirant Vaitkus, where he calls for peace.
„A situation where a person on the air of a national broadcaster is no longer hiding behind what the Kremlin calls 'metodchka' is, I would say, even shocking in a certain sense. What Mr Vaitkus said is exactly what the Kremlin is saying,“ Šimonytė explained.
On Monday, during a debate on LRT television, Vaitkus, a self-nominated presidential candidate, argued that Lithuania should seek „normal, equal relations“ with its neighbours. Instead, he said, Lithuania was interfering in the politics of other countries.
„If we have a woman on the territory of Lithuania – Tsikhanouskaya – who represents Belarus in our corridors of power, then we are directly interfering in another country's internal affairs. When there are noises from that audience about the need to overthrow the government in Minsk by force of arms, we are giving a pretext for the Minsk authorities to say that they do not feel safe about the situation in Lithuania,“ said Vaitkus.
He stressed that he believes that the main problem of foreign policy is that „Lithuania is being led literally to war“.
„Our various government officials, past and present, are publicly proclaiming the need to directly engage in a military conflict with Russia and defeat it on the battlefield. It is obvious to me that such announcements are the destruction of Lithuania“, Vaitkus explained.
ELTA reminds us that the presidential elections in Lithuania will take place on 12 May 2024.
