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“It was not so long ago when all of us — Georgians, Ukrainians, Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians — walked out from behind the Iron Curtain and realized that the doors of the EU and NATO were still quite far away. From the Soviet wreckage, we brought only ourselves. We brought our histories, our cultures, our languages — and we brought our certainty that we’ve had enough of oppression, deportation, torture, detention. We brought our certainty that the rules-based order, that puts human rights at the centre, was the place we wanted to be,” Landsbergis said. 

According to the Foreign Minister, each of us had a different journey in the past 30 years, and while we all hate the label “post-Soviet”, we are linked to each other, in shared history and in shared aspiration. During the Rose Revolution of 2003 the Baltic states stood with Georgia. Just 5 months later, we made it to NATO, and then to the EU, and many of us believed Georgia could quickly move along this path as well. Then Ukrainians rose up in the Orange revolution, and it felt as if a new momentum had come for us former captive nations. That we defined ourselves, and our freedom, once and for all.. 

“Obviously, the story doesn’t end there. Moscow has little interest in seeing a happy ending to this story, and there is constant work being done to divide us, to make us question ourselves,” the Foreign Minister said. 

Landsbergis noted that we stood together because we shared a common direction and purpose. The people of Georgia, just like the people of Lithuania, believe in Europe whole, free, and at peace. In a democracy the Government owes it to you, the Georgian people, to follow the direction your moral compass is showing. Because if they don’t, they are isolating Georgia from the hope of escaping the past.. 

“The Ukrainians are dying every day for their right to be free Europeans. Belarusians who dare to dream and speak out for freedom have been silenced by terror of police and the KGB. I do not want this to be the future of Georgia. I do not want the fundamental discord between the will of the people — to have their security and European future guaranteed — and the government policy to tear this country apart, to open more cracks in Georgia’s foundations for Kremlin to exploit,” the Foreign Minister said. 

“We will never leave you alone, yet each of us has to forge our nation into the one that can attain the future we dream of. The opportunities to get this right are very rare and each attempt comes at a higher price. We must all speak openly about what the current policies would mean for Georgia’s European future before it is too late,” the head of Lithuania’s diplomacy said.