Russia buries hope for peaceful settlement, Putin's increasingly desperate regime crosses another 'red line' – Nauseda.

The Russian Federation has buried the hope for a peaceful settlement, the increasingly desperate Putin regime has crossed another red line, Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda says.

"Today, Russia has once again flagrantly violated international law and has buried hope for a peaceful settlement of the conflict. Today, Putin's increasingly desperate regime has crossed yet another red line. The announced decision to annex the Ukrainian regions of Kherson, Donetsk, Luhansk, and Zaporizhia is illegal and void," Nauseda said in a statement published on the website of the President of Lithuania on Friday.

He stressed that sooner or later Russia would have to pay.

"Sooner or later, Russia will have to pay the price. It will have to answer for Bucha, Irpin and Izium. For the massacre of fleeing civilians in Kramatorsk and for the recent bloody attack on the humanitarian convoy in Zaporizhia. Also, for nuclear and energy blackmail. Ukraine will never forget these crimes. And neither will we, Lithuanians," Nauseda said.

Addressing the Lithuanian people, he noted that today the fate of Lithuania is being decided in Ukraine.

"The fate of the whole of Europe is being decided in Ukraine. If we do not stop the aggressor now, we will risk losing everything that we have created in over three decades of everyday hard work. That is why Lithuania will never, under any circumstances, recognize the sham 'referenda' in the occupied regions nor their results. Just as it does not recognize the earlier annexation of the Crimean Peninsula. And the entire civilized world will do the same," the president said.

Nauseda stressed that Crimea, Kherson, Zaporizhia, Donetsk, and Luhansk are Ukraine.

"We will continue to provide economic, military, social, and financial support to Ukraine until its final victory. We will continue to push for the strongest possible international sanctions against Russia. This is the least we can do. In this dark hour, which always comes before dawn, we firmly know that Ukraine's fight for freedom is our fight, and we will win it," he said.

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