Ukraine to receive arms from Lithuania amid heightened Western concern

Lithuania will begin supplying armaments to the Ukrainian government, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko told a joint press conference in kyiv on Nov. 24 with Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite. They declined to specify what type of arms. They also agreed for Ukrainian soldiers to train in Lithuania, Poroshenko said. Based on the results of their meeting, the two presidents signed a road map to develop their strategic partnership in 2015-2016, reported the president’s press-service.

Europe is supposed to be ready for an “irrational scenario” of actions by Russian President Putin, former NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer told a Nov. 24 session of the plenary session of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly in The Hague, as reported by the UNIAN news agency. “We proceed from the fact that the Russian president is 100 percent rational,” he said, as reported by news.rin.ru. “I can’t give a guarantee that Vladimir Putin is 100% rational. That means that we also have to be ready for irrational scenarios.” Putin is faced with the most pro-European government in Ukraine’s history, Scheffer said. “If I were Putin, I wouldn’t like that,” he said.

The open and covert invasion of Russian Armed Forces – including soldiers without identifiable symbols – onto Ukrainian territory is the main reason for the armed conflict and humanitarian crisis in eastern and southern Ukraine, according to a resolution approved on Nov. 24 by the NATO Parliamentary Assembly in The Hague. The resolution called for the Russian government to halt attempts to destabilize Ukraine, call for pro-Russian separatists to put down their arms and to begin talks with Ukraine’s leadership in order to politically resolve the crisis, return Crimea to Ukrainian jurisdiction and cease the propaganda campaign stirring anti-Western and chauvinist sentiments among Russians.

Zenon Zawada: The cooperation between Ukraine and Lithuania serves as a prime example for how future Western aid will be offered to Ukraine, particularly in the military form. Ukraine will gain support from the West not from obvious channels, such as NATO or the U.S. government, but from cooperation with states such as Lithuania, which are highly threatened by Russia’s conduct in Ukraine and aren’t afraid to challenge Russia. Of course, a hostile response from Russia is possible, including in the form of trade restrictions, as is already being reported by the Lithuanian media.

The Russian Armed Forces have yet to launch a military offensive in Ukraine, as had been anticipated by numerous top-ranking officials Ukrainian and Western officials in recent weeks. Observers are now saying that they will maintain the current daily attacks in the Donbas region until the spring, when an offensive can be launched. But as Scheffer noted, no one can predict the actions of Putin and his military advisors. Therefore, we can only advise Ukraine market watchers to exercise caution and be prepared for the worse. Certainly, that advice plays into Putin’s strategy of destabilizing Ukraine and making the country unattractive to the West.