Jan 9, 2009

Lithuania Brings the Smack Down


Jaybird writes that it looks like Lithuania is ready to put the smack down on this whole crisis, as the Ukranians have called for some "Baltic backup."

According to the Baltic Times:

"Lithuanian Foreign Minister Vygaudas Usackas [pictured] has agreed to take a leading role in negotiations with Ukraine, the EU and Russia over renewing gas supplies to Ukraine. Usackas will join Ukrainian Foreign Minister Volodymyr Ogryzka, Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg -- whose country currently holds the EU presidency -- and European Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs in talks aimed at renewing the flow of gas to Ukraine."
Jaybird adds that most Lithuanians don’t get what the big issue is. The Soviets had a blockade on Vilnius for five months (!) in 1990 that was barely noticed. The tiny nation has proved to be indestructible...and incredibly multilingual.

...which will help save time in translation, we suppose.

2 comments:

Devin said...

Thanks for this post-seems like things might get pretty dicey-but there always seems to be some solution found-the other night on the radio some guy was talking about how the drop in oil prices has been engingeered to destroy Russia economically-it was hard to tell where he was coming from because he blamed Russia solely for the Georgia/Ossetia crisis -which i think is BS-he also said that now Russia will look like the 'bad Guys' to the world because of shutting off gas-I guess we will just have to wait and see-best to you as always!

Anonymous said...

What do you mean it's BS that Russia is solely to blame for the Georgia/Ossetia crisis? Of course it is! They were occupying a portion of Georgian territory and the Georgians wanted it back. How long would Russia put up with the occupation of a portion of its territory?