Lithuanian President Agrees With Biden That Putin Is a Killer

(Bloomberg) -- Lithuania’s president said he agrees with his U.S. counterpart Joe Biden that Russian leader Vladimir Putin is a killer, criticizing other European Union member states that are seeking a more conciliatory approach.

Gitanas Nauseda told the BNS news service Monday that Lithuania won’t “sit indifferently on the back bench,” while witnessing brutal human-rights violations. He cited Kremlin efforts to suffocate opponents like Alexei Navalny in “the most brutal manner,” as well as a disregard for neighbors’ territorial sovereignty in the wake of the Ukraine conflict.

Continuing “to say ‘look, we want to engage with Russia’ as I sometimes hear from my colleagues in the EU -- well, one must be really emotionally and territoriality detached from what Russia is to say such things,” Nauseda said.

Biden’s comments earlier this month further hammered already strained U.S.-Russia ties. The Kremlin responded by recalling its ambassador from Washington, while Putin fired back with a schoolyard expression that can be roughly translated as “it takes one to know one.”

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