West needs 'another Pearl Harbor' to see reality of Russian threat, Lithuanian FM warns
The West will not begin to see Russia's war against Ukraine as an immediate threat to itself until the Kremlin pulls off something similar to Japan's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, said the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania, Gabrielius Landsbergis, according to LRT.lt.
On Tuesday, during a discussion at a foreign policy forum in Berlin, Landsbergis expressed the opinion that the West is not sufficiently open and honest about what Russia's war against Ukraine really means, and suggested that this may be related to the fear of escalation.
"In most cases, we try to imagine what is happening as a regional, distant problem that does not affect us (the West. – ed.) yet," the minister said.
In fact, as he noted, "this is a big political problem that should be at the center of discussions."
"As a person interested in history, I fear that we are waiting for Pearl Harbor. We have already passed all the stages, but we think that if Pearl Harbor has not happened, then everything is fine. However, everything is not so good," said Landsbergis.
REFERENCE. On December 7, 1941, a joint squadron of the Japanese Navy secretly approached the Hawaiian Islands and, with its carrier-based aircraft, delivered a devastating blow to the US military base in Pearl Harbor. 20 ships and nearly 190 American aircraft were destroyed or damaged. Japanese forces lost 29 aircraft and five midget submarines.
The next day, the United States declared war on Japan and entered World War II, something that President Franklin D. Roosevelt tried his best to avoid.
On March 16, 2022, in his speech before the US Congress, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy compared Russia's attack on Ukraine to the attack on Pearl Harbor and to the terrorist attack by al-Qaeda on the World Trade Center on September 11.