Lithuanian foreign minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said to remove the threat of a dangerous Vladimir Putin is to remove him from power.
“From our standpoint, up until the point the current regime is not in power, the countries surrounding it will be, to some extent, in danger,” he said.
“Not just Putin but the whole regime because, you know, one might change Putin and might change his inner circle but another Putin might rise into his place,” Mr Landsbergis added.
Meanwhile, Russia on 24th February launched its invasion of Ukraine. And, according to the latest updates, Ukrainian forces have retaken villages in the Kharkiv region, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said in his nightly address. The number of civilians killed in Ukraine since the beginning of the war is “thousands higher” than official figures, the head of the UN’s human rights monitoring mission in the country said. At least 100 civilians remained in the Azovstal steelworks under heavy Russian fire in the southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol, an aide to the city’s mayor said.
However, Belarus has said it will deploy special operations troops in three areas near its southern border with Ukraine. The Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, said Moscow had agreed to help Minsk produce missiles and warned Belarus could “inflict unacceptable damage on the enemy”.