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Matthias Sonn, German Ambassador to Lithuania:

However: now, the war simply couldn’t be more present anywhere than it is in my country. Germany has welcomed more than 800,000 Ukrainian refugees, and more than 120,000 Ukrainian children are in German schools.

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How does the German perspective differ from the Lithuanian perspective on the Russian war of aggression? It doesn’t.

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The term “Zeitenwende”, introduced by Federal Chancellor Olaf Scholz on February 27th, represents not political hyperbole but grim realism. However – another core paradigm stands, unchanged at least, quite possibly reinforced: the unmatched attraction of the liberal, essentially Western, the rules-based world order established between 1945 and 1990. Our Ukrainian fellow Europeans are not just fighting for their sovereign independence as such. Their struggle is also one to live in a democracy, under the rule of law, with the rights and freedoms we can only enjoy in an open society. The alternative is living under the boots of an autocracy directly or indirectly imposed by military force.