“We rolled out a red carpet for a war of aggression”

Gabrielius Landsbergis, former foreign minister of Lithuania. Photo: Alexandros Michailidis / Shutterstock

VAZHA TAVBERIDZE: Almost three years on since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, if there is one, what is the most important lesson to be learned from these years? And has it been learned?

GABRIELIUS LANDSBERGIS: Well, I think that for us on the front line, we learned the lesson a long time ago that Russia is an aggressor. I think that this is a lesson that some of our friends in the West are still learning. I hope that what happened is enough for them to have this lesson in their hearts for the future. I am still not sure whether they are there yet.

“Who cares what Russia would do if it lost?” you told us, I suspect rhetorically, at last year’s Munich Security Conference. If the last year alone is anything to go by, apparently a lot of people do, no?

Yeah. We’ve all read the report, I think it was released last Monday by Reuters, about how much assistance to Ukraine has been [actually] delivered. So when you read it, it’s chilling to understand that, in a sense, our allies have been guarding Russia more than they have been guarding Ukraine. We cared more about Russia’s interest than we did about Ukraine’s. Because, first of all, the country’s nuclear threat. They worry: what will Russia do if the front collapses? It can use a nuclear weapon. We don’t want that. If Putin loses, maybe he can be overthrown. We don’t want that either. If Russia loses, maybe it will start to disintegrate – we don’t want that. We care so deeply about what happens in Russia, we forget that our main objective is to care about those countries who are attacked by Russia. So it felt like we rolled out a red carpet for the war of aggression. And it really, really triggers me in a very bad way, because, to answer your first question, it proves that we don’t yet understand what Russia is. It will not stop until it is defeated.

Does the West now – after three years, which is quite a long time – know what its end goal is and how to achieve it?

First of all, we have to answer the question, you know, what is the West? You know, where is the centre? Because I think that the interests in Brussels, in Stockholm, Vilnius, Washington, you might find them quite, quite different. If it comes to Washington, President Trump declares that his goal is to have, you know, this conflict just done with. We still don’t quite grasp what to be done with it means, but [with] certain elements from his advisers or special envoys like General Kellogg and his position, then it becomes a bit clearer that they do understand that first Ukraine has to be put in a stronger position. I hope that it becomes a real strategy, but then again, for example, Chancellor Scholz’s position is a bit different. The spirit of appeasement regarding Russia is very strong in at least this left part of Berlin’s political spectrum.

Speaking of Trump, how has his arrival changed the balance, or rather, the rules of the game?

Well, I remember President Emmanuel Macron, a year ago, calling for strategic ambiguity.

When he said that France might consider sending troops to Ukraine?

Yeah, exactly. So I think that we are not in an era of strategic ambiguity, but of strategic uncertainty. Nothing is certain. And it works both ways. You know, we are not certain. We don’t know what Trump will do, but also Putin does not know what Trump will do.

Who has more sleepless nights, do you think?

I think Putin does.

So what kind of peace deal would make Trump look like a winner? What kind of deal is good enough for him to say, I deserve a Nobel Peace Prize for this, you know, hand it over.

Again, I was actually thinking about exactly the same thing: what would it take for President Trump to get the Nobel Prize? The Gaza statements might make it a tiny bit more difficult, honestly, but we’ll see how that plays out. But first of all, I see no way how to turn this into a win-win situation, so that means that Russia has to lose, and the way that Russia has to lose is that Putin has to admit that he is unable to get more, to get a victory. He would have to eat the loss. He would have to explain it to his partners, his business circle, his security circle that, you know, I overextended. I lost Syria, I lost Ukraine, hopefully Georgia too. And yes, there might be some problems for him domestically, but I don’t think that it should be our problem.

I see that we could walk a path that would lead us, the West, the front-line countries, to a better result. But the chances that all of this could just fail are also very great. Trump could just leave Ukraine without security guarantees and shake on it with Putin. This wouldn’t work. We’ve been there.

So there is this belief of yours that there can be no win-win situation – if I were to resort to a metaphor it would be some geopolitical boxing ring or geopolitical UFC, where two fighters are in the cage and one of them has to emerge the loser. There might be also another scenario, where they both win on their own terms, and they both consider themselves winners. Ukraine could well come out a clear loser in this situation. How realistic would that [scenario] be?

You know, it’s impossible to see Ukraine losing just like that. Somebody else would have to lose as well. Europe would lose, its security and future would lose. Imagine a scenario where Trump says, okay, I will not be giving security guarantees, but the EU has to give security guarantees, and the EU is trying to vote, unable to figure out the decision, and that kind of leaves the situation in some sort of a “Minsk 3” scenario. It is likely that this might happen, but this would leave Ukraine very vulnerable. And the Ukrainians would understand that they just have to continue building up their defences and drones and be prepared to strike back any second. That would leave the EU discredited and vulnerable as well. So in this scenario, I believe that the EU would be an even bigger loser than Ukraine itself.

So let’s look at Ukraine then. It’s increasingly looking like it won’t be able to liberate all its territories militarily. Its NATO bid seems to be met with lukewarm enthusiasm, at best. And President Zelenskyy’s latest plea, where he said that if you aren’t letting us into NATO, then give us nukes, that was outright dismissed by Trump’s Ukraine envoy. So what can Kyiv claim as a victory here? Survival?

I think that there are two elements in the peace plan that are not clear. First of all is the support for Ukraine itself – how can we make sure that Ukraine continues building up its defences? That remains to be answered. Yet one clear path would be to support Ukraine with equipment they are unable to build themselves, long range missiles that work also as a deterrent, and then boost their industry. It is clear that the Ukrainians are working miracles – the amount of drones and the capacity of drones that they are able to produce is staggering. We have nothing like that in the West, really, not yet. It will take a rather long time for us to actually catch up to them. You know, the only two other countries that are able to do the same thing are Russia and China. So just for that, having Ukraine on our side is a wise strategy. So this is one area that we are not sure how it will work out. The second part involves security guarantees. For me, NATO would still be the most obvious and most easily implemented security guarantee – easier than anything else that does the same thing but with more equipment, and harder consequences…

And no Article 5

Yeah. Again, it’s hard to imagine that security guarantees outside NATO would work without the US, thinking that Europe would somehow figure it out on themselves. I really have a hard time seeing that. Maybe something can happen, but I am not sure how. So the biggest problem is that there is a path where no assistance is given, no security promises are given, and no guarantees are given. Ukraine is then just kind of, you know, forced to stand down. This is a loss for Ukraine, but it’s also a loss for everybody else.

We have not mentioned the territories themselves yet, the ones that Russia currently occupies and doesn’t seem to be too keen on handing over in any forthcoming negotiations. So as long as Ukraine loses more than 15 per cent of its territory, de facto, can it really consider itself a winner? How can you claim victory when you end up the side that is losing territory?

You know, I don’t have a good answer to this. I would say a couple of things. So first of all, nobody should give up on the territories. There remains an enduring claim regarding the temporally occupied territories. The second thing, you talk about Korea, the country that has been divided almost since the Second World War. But look how differently the two parts of it have developed. In some ways, they are still the same country. In practice, however, they are worlds apart. So I would probably think that this is the way that the debate could be framed, but it will not be an easy conversation.

Let’s talk about Russia – what possible concessions do you see Putin making? And how does Trump plan to make Putin stop without giving him what he wants?

So on the Ukrainian side, one part of the leverage is Kursk. I always had this feeling that this is Ukraine thinking about some future negotiations, to have this gem on their side, to trade. On Trump’s side, I’ve mentioned the support to Ukraine [as a leverage]. I think that it still needs to happen, it’s basically obligatory so that Russia would know that whatever comes, they will be continuously battered. They will lose people. They will die. They will lose infrastructure, and that is, you know, forever. If you want to have it for ten years, well, you will have it for ten years.

Is that a prospect Putin would be entirely averse to? Who is more prepared to have ten more years of war in Ukraine, Putin or the proverbial West?

Well, that’s a good way to ask a question. A war in Ukraine or a war in Russia? Because I think that he’s prepared to have war in Ukraine for ten years, but I’m not entirely sure that he’s prepared to have a war in Russia for ten years. Things that we are seeing now like destroyed industry, imagine ten times that. No factory is safe. Nothing is safe, every industry is under threat. Ukraine is able to hit every legitimate target.

So that would be the one final waiting game that he would not be keen to play?

You know, it is a bet, of course. But I would think that this is a bet that we could try, or Ukraine should be trying.

Then there is also the oil prices thing. Do you think that’s realistic?

I would connect that with what Kellogg said about increased sanctions. The US has a very strong instrument of secondary sanctions. They can go after the companies that work with the sanctioned industry. This means they can go after Chinese companies, Indian companies, after whoever works with Russia, they can be sanctioned. That is a strong push.

Let’s suppose it all works out well, they shake hands and make a deal. But how realistic is it to expect Putin to honour any deal? Would a peace deal last beyond Trump’s second – and final – term?

The only way that the deal would hold is that Putin understands that he lost. He has to really understand that his efforts to continue this would be futile, or they would cost him even more. It is also possible that we would end up in Minsk 3 – no security guarantees, no promises. Just make the deal, and the Russians shake on it. So for them, it would be a dual victory, because they can continue the war the next day, and another thing they can do is completely humiliate the West. Because the US would be forced to admit that well, we forced Ukraine to make a deal, and now it’s broken.

And if it’s the first version, where he shakes on a deal and then actually honours it, that goes against everything he stood for, really. That doesn’t give him an entire page dedicated to him in the schoolbooks of Russian history, it means a smaller picture, smaller text, smaller font. I don’t think he will be too keen on that.

No, he won’t be. And that’s exactly my point – it’s not going to be easy to have a real peace. In a real peace deal, Russia has to lose.

A version of this interview was first published in Georgian by RFE/RL

Gabrielius Landsbergis is a Lithuanian politician and diplomat who served as Lithuania’s Minister of Foreign Affairs from December 2020 until November 2024. He has been the chairman of the Homeland Union since 2015.

Vazha Tavberidze is a Georgian journalist and staff writer with RFE/RL’s Georgian Service. His writing has been published in various Georgian and international media outlets, including The Times, the Spectator, the Daily Beast and New Eastern Europe.

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Donald Trump, geopolitics, NATO, peace talks, Russia, Russian invasion of Ukraine, Ukraine