GLOBAL SECURITY SITUATION HOTTING UP, SAYS GRYBAUSKAITE

Courtesy of The Baltic Times     February 15, 2016

Speaking at the Munich Security Forum on February 13, Lithuanian President says that the global security situation between Russia and the West is getting “very hot.”

Her comments came in light of Russian Prime Minister, Dmitry Medvedev, stating that the world is slipping into a “new Cold War” with the West, at the same conference.

“As we see it, NATO’s political line towards Russia remains unfriendly and closed,” the ex-Russian President told the Interfax news agency. “I can say even more harshly – we have slipped into a new Cold War era.”

“The security matter arrives from the aggressor,” said Grybauskaite. “With Russia saying that the world is probably facing a second Cold War, I would say that the world is probably facing some kind of hot war, because we already are seeing that the Russians are demonstrating open military aggression in Ukraine, and open military aggression in Syria.

“There is nothing cold about this; it’s already very hot,” Grybauskaite said during a presidential debate.

“To blame Europe or the rest of the world because somebody else is imposing such unpredictable and very aggressive behavior, nobody will believe it,” she continued. “It looks like we are still talking like different civilisations – we are not able to understand each other.”

Polish President Andrzej Duda underlined during the debate that in the current situation, the key thing for Poland is to strengthen NATO capabilities in Eastern Europe.

In his words, it’s a natural progression that NATO’s external border moved eastwards after a number of Eastern European nations joined the organisation over the last decade.

The Lithuanian president also pointed to her country’s efforts to step up its own defence. “We ourselves need to do a lot of things, and we are doing it,” she explained. “For example, we have increased defence expenditure.”

The annual Munich Security Conference focused on the threat of terrorism, the refugee crisis, the upcoming NATO summit in Warsaw, NATO’s future, plus the security situation in Africa and the Middle East.