Lithuania’s former president Dalia Grybauskaitė was once considered a potential choice to be NATO’s next secretary general. She now says her hardline stance on Russia has ruled out her candidacy.
According to Grybauskaitė, NATO’s top post usually goes to someone with unanimous support from all 30 member states. “I am not that,” she told the New York Times.
“Some countries will think that my strong position toward Russia is an obstacle,” she said on Tuesday on the sidelines of the annual Reykjavik Global Forum for women leaders.
“You need to deal with Russia as with terrorists, and not negotiate, and not to make compromises,” she explained her position.
In her words, NATO states should immediately supply Ukraine with more military equipment that countries, including the US, have been reluctant to provide, like long-range missiles that can strike Russian territory.
She also did not rule out the idea of deploying Western troops to the battlefield in Ukraine: “The response needs to be adequate to the attack.”
Grybauskaitė, who served as Lithuania’s president from 2009 to 2019 and is known as “the Iron Lady of the Baltics” for her tough stance on Russia, was seen as one of the candidates to replace the current NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg once his term ends.
Stoltenberg was initially scheduled to step down in September, but his term was extended for one year after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
According to the New York Times, the behind-the-scenes campaign to replace Stoltenberg focuses on women. However, Grybauskaitė no longer appears to be in the running. The current favourite is Chrystia Freeland, the Canadian-Ukrainian who is Canada’s deputy prime minister and finance minister.
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