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Statement by the Republic of Lithuania at the UN GA special solemn meeting in commemoration of all victims of the Second World War on Wednesday, 7 May 2025.

President,

Lithuania aligns with the statement by the European Union. I also make a statement in my national capacity.

Today we pay tribute to those who perished and suffered during the horrors of the Second World War. We remember tens of millions who died, majority among them innocent civilians, also many wounded, displaced, missing.

We honor and mourn of all mercilessly killed and tortured in the Holocaust, in the persecution of targeted population groups and individuals. This tremendous loss will never be recovered.  

The Second World War caused enormous trauma that is and will be felt for generations. The tragedy of the 20th century that should never be forgotten. Moreover - it should never be repeated.

Lithuania, like so many European nations during the Second World War have suffered the calamity of foreign occupation. We were preys of both the Nazi and Soviet onslaught, unleashing the bloodshed, losses and pain to our communities.

Under the most difficult times of occupations, the nation have never lost hope and strive to restore our State. We fought for our dream.  On February 16, 1949, the seven commanders of all the military formations of Lithuania‘s anti-Soviet resistance have signed a Declaration expressing the nations will to re-establish democratic independent Lithuania. They supported the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and called for its applicability to Lithuania. They carved Lithuania's desire to join the United Nations and ongoing European integration process.

And their voices have never been heard at this UN General Assembly Hall. The Iron Curtain has split the Continent. Outnumbered and outgunned they died ambushed in the battlefields or, when betrayed and taken alive, tortured and executed by NKVD or KGB in Moscow or Vilnius prisons. Out of seven signatories only one had military rank, others were teachers, students and accountant. We, Lithuanians, owe them our resilience to withstand the totalitarian regimes.

The World War II for us ended in the 1990s, when independence from the occupying Soviet rule was restored. And when the last Soviet soldier left our territory.

Mr. President,

After being admitted to the UN in 1991, Lithuania have joined the democratic transatlantic and European alliances. We continue working with all the peace-loving nations to build a better, peaceful world, based on international law, human rights and sovereign equality of states.

Regrettably today we must also recognize that our aspirations for the future are being brutally challenged. Russia’s continued unprovoked military aggression against Ukraine, targets and destroys Ukrainian cities and murders civilians. It is being done in pursuit of the neocolonial legacy of the Soviet Union, brutally violating the UN Charter and international law.  Just as communism crushed entire nations under the pretense of “liberty”, Russia now falsely claims fighting “neo-Nazism”, while waging a cruel war of conquest against Ukraine.

It instrumentalizes the memory of the Second World War to justify its former and current crimes avoiding accountability. Glorifying the Soviet Union role in war, it tends to obscure the fact that it was the Molotov – Ribbentrop Pact, its secret protocols, signed between the Soviet and Nazi foreign ministers on behalf of Hitler and Stalin, that illegally divided Europe, including Baltic States among themselves. And that was the final step towards World War II.

Now, like in the 1939, we again hear a blatant Russia’s demands that half of Europe returns to its “sphere of influence”.

Mr. President,

We should not allow selective remembrance to distort the past and justify present aggressive behavior. We regret that Putin’s regime has stifled Russia’s own community of credible voices, historians from Memorial and other civil society organizations. They have worked diligently in archives and with society to establish the facts and to present the names and the fate of the victims of the repressions of the last century. In 2009 European parliament has issued a call in defense of “Memorial” and its work. This suppression of trusted and honest voices only delays the freeing Russia’s society from the narratives adapted from the totalitarian “handbook.”                        

Till this happens, it is the responsibility of all peace-loving members of the international community to defend human rights, the international law and the UN Charter, the principles of equality and sovereignty of states, their territorial integrity, to reject war and aggression, and to pursue peaceful coexistence of all.

This is our duty in memory of all victims of Second World War.

I thank you.