Blood Brothers? is a 25-minute documentary made with unique archive images from the Lithuanian national broadcaster, LRT. In it, NATO Review Magazine talks to Lithuanians to find out how they managed to take such a different path, how close they came to Ukraine’s fate, and what advice they would give to Ukrainians today. We hear from those who were on the frontline of Lithuania’s 1990 revolution – including the newsreader who was taken off air by Soviet forces during a broadcast – through to those assisting Ukrainians on the frontline today.
00:00- ITN and LRT historical footage
00:31- Title
00:36- footage of the celebration of Lithuanian Independence Day 16th February 2015
00:39- historic map former soviet and eastern countries
00:44- various LRT footage
00:52- Footage of the celebration of Lithuanian Independence Day 16th February 2015
00:57- ITN and LRT footage
01.43 – Roland Kaćinskas – Political Director, Ministry of Foreign Affairs
That night, fourteen people were killed and more than a thousand injured. I was one of those students who stood among many, many other thousand people, who stood that night and many, many other nights afterwards in front of the parliament building.
02.05 – Roland Kaćinskas – Political Director, Ministry of Foreign Affairs
And then I say defending... this defence consisted mainly of singing songs, praying the rosary or erecting the barricades.
02:20- Paul King stand up
02:39- Lithuanian historical footage
03.00 – Vytautas Landsbergis – Former Lithuanian head of state and independence leader
If you want to keep the old Soviet Union, it is your business. We are independent in spirit, in law, in international law, in our eyes, and we are doing it.
03:15- LRT historical footage of the Soviet invasion of Lithuania in 1991
03:29- LRT historical footage of Eglie Bucalaite
03.52 – Eglie Bucalaite - Newsreader (interpreter voice-over)
I do not think anybody was thinking about their personal safety at that time. The only moment when it wasn’t clear whether I will survive or I will be killed, were those minutes when I saw those soldiers in uniforms, who were wearing masks and walking in corridors of our broadcasting building and I was sitting in the studio. There was a thought that occurred to me, whether this is the end of my life and how simple and unexpected everything may end.
04:25- LRT historical footage
04.29 – Man in the street 1 (interpreter voice-over)
Soviet times were terrifying. I could listen to the anthem only through the American radio channel. We will find a Lithuanian transmission on radio. When the anthem was being playing, I will put it on the highest volume so it could be heard in the whole house.
05.00 – Eglie Bucalaite - Newsreader (interpreter voice-over)
The premises of this television were occupied by the military television, which was making broadcasts of a completely opposite information. A Russian propaganda, which would make us laugh today, if nothing would be happening in Ukraine. In fact, we see the same thing.
05:27- Paul King stand up in the check point on the border between Lithuania and Belarus
06.10 – Tomas Šernas – Former Lithuanian customs officer (interpreter voice-over)
This place resembled the Ukrainian Maidan, but nobody was singing here. We had to work and there were no crowds like in front of the parliament, just seven or eight people situated by a forest without any means of telecommunication.
When I was working, I was sitting behind that writing desk. It was an early morning, approximately two hours till sunrise. The trailer was standing where those crosses are placed now. I heard a strange noise, I raised my eyes from my writing desk and I saw a man running and holding a gun.
They were Russians who were wearing Russian military uniforms which didn’t have any distinctive signs, and they were without military shoes, they were just wearing sneakers. This allowed them to sneak in silently during the night. The lights were turned off. We were told to lay down on the ground. When they started shooting, there was almost no sound, so they died silently.
A gun had a silencer, so there was no sound of a shooting. They didn’t say anything. They were only killing people by shooting them in their heads. The same was done to me.
08:00- Paul King stand up in the check point on the border between Lithuania and Belarus
08.50 – Linas Linkevičius – Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania
We were challenged in the beginning of the ‘90s, maybe you do not remember, but I do. There were empty streets because there was no gas and no cars, it was wintertime I remember the cold in the flats. It was kind of lesson to us because we would like to be independent so okay, we can be independent and this is the price.
09.13 – Dalia Grybauskaitė – President of Lithuania
In these eight months, we were able to turn our economy towards the West and in eight months, we started to trade with the West, practically two-thirds of our economy.
09.34 – Nerijus Maliukevičius – Institute of International Relations and Political Science
Being next to Russia, we are suffering the most from the sanctions. Our agriculture sector, our transport sector, they are suffering every day and despite that fact, we are still being one of the biggest proponents of the sanctions because that’s the only way how you can stop aggression, how you can send very strong messages to the Russian leadership.
10.07 – Vytautas Landsbergis – Former Lithuanian head of state and independence leader
We realised very well that Soviet Union as such is bankrupt. And they realised, therefore they wanted to manipulate with some reforms, but how to save the empire.
10.33 – Linas Linkevičius – Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania
The economy’s ruined, frankly. No investments, no perspectives. In addition, oil prices even bit improved but not yet to the perfect so to say level. So the situation’s really bad. You can refer to the nationalism, but how many times you can do that? This channel Russia Today, or I’m calling Russia Yesterday, or Russian-speaking channels, this is terrible propaganda. Sometimes it’s misinterpreted as freedom of speech. If Goebbels was journalist, then I’m giving up.
11.20 – Roland Kaćinskas – Political Director, Ministry of Foreign Affairs
We have to stand together with the Ukrainian people and not only we as Lithuanians, but I think the whole Europe has to stand together with the Ukrainian people because what’s happening in Ukraine is not only about Ukraine, as it wasn’t only about Lithuania.
12.02 - Linas Linkevičius – Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania
Looking around such solid international institutions, big budgets, a lot of ambitions, 21st century, we can do nothing when European country invading other neighbouring country, and we can do nothing, just statements of concern. Is it not strange for you? For me it is.
12.21 – Vytautas Landsbergis – Former Lithuanian head of state and independence leader
What is compromise? They are always, as in our case in 1990, they demanded capitulation, calling it compromise. You will never be given your independence, they were words of Gorbachev to me. Be reasonable, it is unrealistic, come to real matters. We will give you more autonomy. Now you are given 7 % of your national income in currency, 7 %. We will give you 20, be happy. For normal people and for... why not 100, it's our profits.
13.30 – Linas Linkevičius – Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania
I shouldn’t say that we are responsible because we are not attacking Ukraine, we’re not invading that country. But by being passive, or by being not consistent, we are implicitly contributing to the escalation.
13.43 – Vytautas Landsbergis – Former Lithuanian head of state and independence leader
Why we are talking today openly, and we see that what is on-going is the Munich 2, the sell-out of Ukraine. I could remind advice of one old woman in a village. She said: Boys, don’t make even a little step back because they will put their foot on this place where was your feet.
14.28 – Dalia Grybauskaitė – President of Lithuania
If you have professional military without identification signs and the flag, how you call it, of course it is professional and we know that it is Russian professional military but they behave as terrorists.
14.40 – Linas Linkevičius – Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania
Victims are victims if they are civilians. I’m always saying this example because I part myself in March in Paris, this ‘Je suis Charlie', and I marched together with all colleagues defending, you know, freedom of speech. There were twice more victims per day than in Paris at that time so maybe not correct to compare because every victim is one too many.
15:05- ITN footage from Ukraine
15.17 - Vytautas Landsbergis – Former Lithuanian head of state and independence leader
Russia is a state which has no borders, that is to be realised. Even as to Ukraine, they still suffer that there is a border between Baltic states and Russia, and they don’t have even with Estonia a state border. We have many English-speakers everywhere in the world and maybe the United Kingdom may come to India back. They are English-speakers, maybe they suffer.
16.00 – Linas Linkevičius – Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania
They have a special democracy, their democracy is different. It’s specific Russian democracy, as they say.
16.07 - Vytautas Landsbergis – Former Lithuanian head of state and independence leader
In Western meaning, partnership is doing something together for common good, common benefit. In Eastern Russian understanding, partnership is a game in which your partner is to be put on his knees. My advice is not to listen what he says. Look what he makes, look at the action. They are still talking. Oh, what he said; what he has said today; what he has said yesterday; there is a difference.
17:10- LRT and ITN footage
17:42- Paul King stand up at the entrance of the building where Ukraine was supposed to sign the Association Agreement with the EU
18:02- LRT historical footage
18.11 – Dalia Grybauskaitė – President of Lithuania
You know, I don’t even want to think about it. I only can thank God that the decision of our nation twenty-five years ago was for the freedom and we became the members of NATO and the European Union, and for us it is new chance of history, and we took it.
18:41- ITN footage from Georgia
18.48 – Linas Linkevičius – Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania
Again, recalling 2008, Georgia, they were not members of NATO. We have a result. Ukraine, a big country in the middle of Europe, they are not members of NATO, we have a result. So this is the difference.
19:05- Vox pop in Lithuania during the independence day, 16th of February 2015 celebrations in Vilnius
20.09 - Dalia Grybauskaitė – President of Lithuania
I felt pity for our other neighbours who practically lost these twenty-five years of their independence after the Soviet system was collapsing, like in Ukraine.
20:18- Footage of Žana Puodžius in Ukraine
20.36 – Žana Puodžius – Actress and activist
During the Ukraine, I started to understand what happened at my country because I was very little, I didn’t remember it. And it was just history, I know it, we learnt in the school and so on, but I didn’t have real emotion about this and in Ukraine I started to understand what happened in our country, very deep.
21:09 - Eglie Bucalaite - Newsreader (interpreter voice-over)
Yes, this really reminds me of those days and it strikes me that we are very alike. I make a comparison with everything that is happening in Ukraine now. It wasn’t easy, it was really hard, I cannot say that we have escaped from the Soviet Union easily, without any damages, without any sacrifices. But when I see what is happening now, how long it lasts and how much it costs, it is hard to believe and I feel an endless joy that we didn’t have such an ending in Lithuania and that we have been free for many years.
21:42- ITN footage of EU Council
21.55 – Nerijus Aleksiejūnas, Diplomat, Lithuania EU Presidency LeadershipWe were talking ten years ago that we need to look to Russia through a different angle, and now it seems that we are right about our understanding. We were right about our analysis what’s happening in Russia, about the processes, internal processes in Russia. And now I think that there is also an additional argument why people in Europe now listen much more carefully to what we are saying.
22.25 – Roland Kaćinskas – Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania
I think it was President Reagan who said that freedom is only one generation away from extinction. So every generation has to do its work.
22.36 – Vytautas Landsbergis – Former Lithuanian head of state and independence leader
Freedom is always contested, it’s never granted.
22.43 – Linas Linkevičius – Minister of Foreign Affairs
More than ten years ago, we made the right decision to join NATO and the European Union. That’s the first point I would like to mention. During that time I was defence minister, I remember the succession process, I remember all these emotions during the very day of membership. When I was in Washington and I received a call from my duty officer that Belgian jets crossed our airspace and were going to land in our airbase to conduct their policing. It was a couple of hours before the moment of membership, so to say, literally speaking. It's very difficult even to explain what were the feelings. It was something very, very special. And these feelings are still quite strong.
23.27 – Dalia Grybauskaitė – President of Lithuania
I felt proud that we managed to do what we did in proper time, that we knew our neighbour and we knew what we need to do because of our knowledge of this neighbour, and that we are on the right side of history today. And for us, it is a huge luck, huge luck for our nation.
22:49- Various shots from the Lithuanian Independence Day celebrations of February 16th 2015 in Vilnius
Subscribe
