Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania Gabrielius Landsbergis. File photoMOSCOW, May 18.The official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, said that the ancestors of Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis collaborated with the Nazis, calling the minister’s call for a change of power in Russia an attempt to interfere in internal affairs and destroy the remnants of bilateral relations. «Let's see who these people are… whose Russophobia is just in their blood, it is apparently inherited… I can tell a lot about the Landsbergis regime, there is a whole dynasty there. It is enough to recall the great-grandfather of the head of the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry,» she said during a briefing.
The Lithuanian Foreign Ministry has proposed a way to circumvent Hungary's veto on an embargo on oil from the Russian FederationThe ancestor of Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis — Vytautas Landsbergis-Ziemkalnis in 1941 became the Minister of Public Utilities in the government collaborating with the Nazis and was directly involved in the creation of concentration camps, including in Kaunas, explained Zakharova. She added that Vytautas Landsbergis-Ziemkalnis also collaborated with the Nazi secret police, the Gestapo, and fled to Australia after the war. He returned to the USSR in 1959 after he passed information about other fugitive Nazis to the Soviet security agencies. «Family traditions of adaptability and change of political position were continued by the grandfather of the Lithuanian Foreign Minister, Vilnius Philharmonic Professor Vytautas Landsbergis, who actively collaborated with the secret services of the USSR and on their recommendation, he was appointed as the leader of the movement of the Lithuanian intelligentsia in support of perestroika… By the will of Landsbergis, this structure turned into a separatist movement for Lithuania's secession from the USSR,» Zakharova added. Earlier, Lithuania and Latvia announced that they would lower the level of diplomatic relations with Russia, having recalled their ambassadors from Moscow, the Russian representatives should leave Riga and Vilnius.
