Russian Foreign Minister Gives Imprimatur to New Moscow Book Claiming Lithuanian Nation and Language ‘Do Not Exist’

Paul Goble    

    Staunton, Apr. 30 – Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kestutis Budrys has denounced a new Russian book, featuring a preface by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, which claims that the Lithuanian nation and language “do not exist” and that Lithuanians in fact are Slavs like the Russians.

    Budrys says that this message and the Kremlin’s support for it – the book is now available freely on line from Moscow’s International Relations publishing house – is of a piece with other Moscow books and articles about Russia’s neighbors and should be denounced and then ignored as fake propaganda.

    “In Russia, these activities are funded generously, they see the benefit and the sense in it and they do it,” Budrys says. “The most important thing here is that we also spread our message properly and do not begin to doubt our own history” (delfi.lt/ru/news/politics/glava-mid-litvy-rossiya-cherez-knigi-opravdyvaet-agressiyu-i-iskazhaet-istoriyu-baltii-120105915).

    At the same time, it deserves to be noted as a worrisome repetition of the kind of statements Putin and other Russian officials made about Ukraine prior to the launch of the Kremlin’s expanded war in that country and thus suggests that some in the Russian capital want to do the same thing in Lithuania or at least lay the threatening groundwork for doing so.