Vladimir Putin wants to re-create the “empire of fear” of the Soviet Union in which he is at the top of the “power pyramid”, a Lithuanian MP has told Breitbart News.
Lithuanian MP Dovilė Šakalienė, whose country shares a land border with the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad (Königsberg / Królewiec), said that Russian strongman Vladimir Putin has been corrupted by years of “uncontested power” and that he was “traumatised” into sociopathy under the communist Soviet Union.
“As a child, I lived in the Soviet Union, and still remember the propaganda that the USSR was supposedly ‘the strongest and the biggest and the best country in the world’. My family suffered from communists so much – deported to Siberia, imprisoned, tortured, simply for not accepting the Russian occupation,” Šakalienė told Breitbart London.
“That’s how ‘the best country’ was treating its own people, who didn’t want to be a part of that gigantic prison-state.”
The Lithuanian lawmaker said that Putin “thrived in that Soviet atmosphere of fear and omnipotence, and of course, he wants it back,” explaining that Putin served in the KGB while touting his grandfather’s connections to the “bloodiest elite of red terror” including as serving as a cook for both Joseph Stalin and Vladimir Lenin.
“Especially that now he is at the top of the power pyramid, his dream is to re-create the empire of fear and expand influence in order to revive a two-axis world, with the U.S. and Novorossiya (New Russia) as the great rivals.”
Prior to the Russian invasion, Šakalienė was perhaps best known for her struggle against another authoritarian regime, Communist China. In March of last year, she was personally sanctioned by Beijing for crafting legislation condemning the “genocide” being committed in Xinjiang against the Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities.
Her country has been in a protracted conflict with China after opening a de facto Taiwanese embassy in Vilnius last summer. In response to the threats, including of war, from the CCP, the Lithuanian MP previously told Breitbart London “we are small but we are tough“.
In terms of Russia, she said that she believes the “only hope” of confronting the “sadistic dictator” will be to make the economic impacts against the “political-oligarch elite” surrounding Putin “insufferable” so that they reject his expansionist campaign in Ukraine.
“Freezing Nord Stream 2 was a good step… but too late. It will also be necessary to disconnect Europe from Russian gas, these measures shall hit us all as well, the only question is if we realise the cost of our indecisiveness.”
For the Lithuanian MP, the invasion of Ukraine by Russia has raised the concern that Putin will try to expand his campaign and reclaim her homeland.
“Lithuania has found itself between two Russian territories – Kaliningrad, which is jammed with nukes, and Belarus, the new colony of Russia,” Šakalienė said, noting that Putin-ally Alexander Lukashenko has provided the Russian military the use of Belarussian land and air space to launch the invasion of Ukraine.
She said that the “Belarussian army is fully integrated with the Russian army, so we are witnessing the de facto absorption of Belarus.” Confirming earlier predictions by US officials, Belarussian soldiers have now joined the invasion, entering Ukraine from the north.
In light of the perceived growing threat against Lithuania, a NATO member state, the lawmaker said that she and her Social Democrat Party have broken with their conventions and supported the government initiative to increase military spending as well as advocating for a bilateral agreement to ship weapons and other military equipment to Ukraine.
“During extraordinary times extraordinary measures must be employed, and stopping the war, protecting your homeland are the game-changers,” Šakalienė said.
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