Lithuanian daily Vilniaus diena in its 5 August editorial was critical on the Lithuanian Russian relationship.  Stasys Gudavicius thinks it is Russia to be blamed for a new freeze in bilateral relationships.

Perhaps a year ago President Dalia Grybauskaite was fostering certain seedlings of love towards Russia, but now those seedlings are completely gone, says Stasys Gudavicius. They have been eradicated by a renewed freeze in the bilateral relations.

This freeze is not new. It simply got renewed after last year’s real or imagined thaw in the bilateral relations between Lithuania and Russia.  However, the fact that the thaw was so brief and the fact that it was barely felt allows one to think that it was merely imagined, not real, and probably was determined by Russia’s hope to find a new friend in the person of Grybauskaite. Of course, the Lithuanian president too made some statements and took some actions fuelling pragmatism in the foreign policy related to the big Eastern neighbour.

The illusion of the thaw burst, however. Perhaps this was not too visible, because diplomacy is pretty secretive, not overly public, thing. The fact of the matter, however, is this: The relations with Moscow have returned to the stage they were in a year, two years, or even more years ago, when President Valdas Adamkus and his team were responsible for Lithuania’s foreign policy.

This year, Gudavicius reminds, together with some other countries, Lithuania blocked the EU talks with Russia over a visa-free travel regime. Russia increasingly stronger criticizes Lithuania for its supposed attempts to distort history, for alleged resurrection of neo-Nazism, for condemnation of the Soviet past, and for saying the years between 1944 and 1945 were not liberation but a continuation of the occupation.

In the diplomacy of visits there are no great achievements either.   Grybauskaite met with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in Helsinki and Prime Minister Andrius Kubilius spoke with Putin in Moscow. However, have there been any palpable results after these meetings?

One probably should not expect them after the Lithuanian president’s planned trip to Russia either, Gudavicius is convinced.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev did not come to the 20th anniversary of 11 March, and Grybauskaite rejected the invitation to come to Moscow on 9 May to the 65th anniversary of the victory over Nazism. Putin also did notshow up in Vilnius for the meeting of the Baltic Sea region’s leaders in June.

The suspects in the 13 January case and in the Medininkai case, who are hiding in Russia, have not been extradited to Lithuania, even though Vilnius tries to cooperate with the Russians in solving issues of terrorism prevention, which was proven by the Egle Kusaite case.

Probably everyone is convinced that under such conditions it is impossible to talk about a thaw in the bilateral relations. At best, one can merely talk about retaining certain status quo – we continue to smile to one another, but we do not abandon our value-based positions that we have held for a dozen-or-so years.

According to reliable sources, the desire of Grybauskaite, the main architect of the Lithuanian foreign policy, to have better relations with Russia got cold when in the beginning of the year Moscow presented certain confidential proposals to Lithuania, which probably were related to economy or energy.

Probably only the president and a small portion of our diplomats know what sort of proposals were made. In any case, in those proposals Grybauskaite saw deceit and Moscow’s desire to turn Lithuania into its satellite. This is something the president simply cannot allow to happen, no matter how strongly she wants to have better relations with Russia.

The head of state was also disappointed by the Washington administration’s desire to “restart” the ties with the Russians. To “restart” them by seemingly sacrificing the interests of certain countries, including Lithuania.

Therefore, there are no positive changes in the relations with Russia, and probably will not be in the near future, Gudavicius concludes.