Lithuanian PM: Russia Has “Overbeaten Goebbels By Far”

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Can I just ask you to react to President Zelenskyy’s most impassioned speech to the U.N.? I mean, this is the body that is meant to be able to help wage peace in the midst of war. And yet he called out the council, and he called out Russia for being a member that is constantly thwarting that. What is your reaction to him saying that the Security Council may no longer be fit for purpose?

INGRIDA SIMONYTE, LITHUANIAN PRIME MINISTER: Well, just — I don’t know. I find little argument of disagreement here, because, basically, what we see in this circumstances is that somebody is trying to be a judge in his own case. And we know that, in a civilized world, this is not the principle that we follow. And, definitely, we find it a hurdle that cannot be overcome, because Russia will never, ever look objectively at what it is doing. And it does not even have a purpose of doing this. Their purpose is to portray the situation exactly the opposite from where it looks like. And we have heard this guy out there, Nebenzia, today with the slip of tongue when he was actually saying what is happening, that there were no corpses before the Russian invasion. And we all know that. But what Russia is doing, they are trying to put the things — their feet up and head down. And, definitely, that doesn’t help to strengthen security, neither in Europe, nor globally.

AMANPOUR: So, as you mentioned, Ambassador Nebenzia basically also called it — I mean, he directly addressed Zelenskyy afterwards and said, basically, this is false, that these images are a created. We all know that’s not true, because there is the repeated evidence of it. And they were the only ones there when those corpses ended up in such terrible — in such a terrible situation.

SIMONYTE: Yes. Yes. And at the — I’m sorry.

AMANPOUR: But he also said that he had come just — go ahead.

SIMONYTE: And, at the same time, they published an article in one of their propaganda resources in how they are going to denazify Ukraine, which is pretty much — I have been thinking about Kafka and Orwell, a month-and-a- half ago, when Putin was explaining his views on how the world is arranged, and then the countries have their sovereignty. But now I must say that they have overbeaten Goebbels by far.