President Maia Sandu’s speech to the Lithuanian Parliament on Independence Restoration Day

Dear President Nauseda,

Professor Landsbergis,

President Gribauskaite,

Honourable Speaker Olekas,

Prime Minister Ruginiene

Members of the Seimas, dear friends,

Thirty-six years ago, on March 11, 1990, Lithuania became free - the first to break from Moscow's grip, and a model to every people who dared to believe that what had been taken by force could be reclaimed by will.

That was an act of immense courage. The Kremlin called it illegal. The Soviet Union imposed an economic blockade. The world watched, uncertain. And you stood firm.

Today I stand before you not only to mark this anniversary, but to carry something with me - a document from our national archives. A resolution, adopted on May 31, 1990 - eighty days after your declaration - recognising the restored independence of the Republic of Lithuania.

I am proud to say that Moldova was the first in the world to recognise your independence. And I want to pause on that, because I think it has not always been fully understood - not even by us.

Moldova in May 1990 was not a sovereign state. We were still part of the Soviet Union. We had no army, no international standing, no protection if Moscow decided to punish our audacity. And yet our parliament looked at what you had done and said: this is right, we stand with you.

It was our own small act of courage. A gesture of solidarity offered before we ourselves were free. And today, thirty-six years later, I come before you to say: the spirit of that gesture lives on.

That solidarity was born from a shared understanding of what history had done to us both. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 - a secret deal signed between two totalitarian powers over the heads of other nations - sealed the fate of Lithuania and Moldova alike. Your country was occupied. Mine was carved up, absorbed, renamed, and subjected to a project of colonial erasure. We were not consulted. We were not warned. We simply woke up inside an empire we had never chosen.

What followed was the memory both our countries carry: the memory of what an empire does to people it claims to own. The suppression of language, identity, traditions. The deportations - families loaded onto cattle wagons in the middle of the night, names erased from maps and history books.

The message, repeated across decades, that our cultures were irrelevant, our histories invented, our national existence an inconvenience to someone else's project. It is a memory that unites us - and it is a memory that Moscow has always sought to erase, distort, or weaponise.

On January 13 1991, Soviet forces stormed your Parliament building and the Vilnius television tower. Unarmed civilians stood between tanks and the building that held your freedom. Fourteen people were killed. Hundreds were injured. You did not retreat.

On March 2 1992, Russian-backed separatist forces, supported by elements of Moscow's 14th Army, launched their assault on Moldovan constitutional order. That was the beginning of the Transnistrian conflict.

We lost hundreds of lives. A part of our territory has been occupied ever since, with Russian troops stationed there without our consent for more than thirty years.

Different dates, different places - but the same aggressor, the same method, the same logic: that nations do not have the right to exist outside Moscow's sphere. That our sovereignty is conditional. That our memory can be rewritten.

And this is precisely why memory matters so much - as a form of resilience, a form of national defence.

A culture of memory means protecting ourselves from manipulation. It means refusing to confuse the aggressor with the victim. It means recognising, and honouring, those who defended our countries - those who kept national consciousness alive when expressing identity was forbidden - and those who survived deportation, the camps, and the hunger, without losing their dignity.

In Moldova, we are working to rebuild this culture of memory. We know how the Soviet system tried - through education, through enforced silence, through fear - to replace authentic memory with a managed one.

We are working to undo that damage: in our schools, in our public institutions, in how we speak about our past. Because we have seen, firsthand, how Russia uses historical revisionism as a weapon. It rewrites the record before it repeats the crime.

I therefore welcome with deep conviction Lithuania's commitment that assessing the crimes of totalitarian regimes and combating the rewriting of history will be among the priorities of its Presidency of the Council of the EU.

You also understand, as we do, that Russia's aggression against Ukraine is accompanied by systematic information manipulation and historical revisionism. You understand that impunity does not end conflicts - it invites new ones.

Ladies and gentlemen,

Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine began four years ago. It continues today. And I want to say something that I believe needs to be said clearly:

Russia is not winning. Behind its triumphalist headlines and the territorial claims is a system under enormous strain. Russia's economy is on a war footing it cannot sustain indefinitely. Its army has suffered losses on a scale that Moscow works hard to conceal. Its international isolation, while imperfect, is real.

And Ukraine - Ukraine is not merely surviving. It is innovating. On the battlefield, it is reshaping the way modern warfare is fought, with ingenuity and courage that has astonished military strategists across the world. In its cities, its institutions, its people, it is demonstrating something more important still: what it looks like to fight for values.

For the idea that a free nation gets to decide its own future. Every day Ukraine holds the line, it keeps Russia away from our borders, from the rest of Europe - and it deserves every bit of our support.

But we - the community of democracies - have a problem. The problem of telling that story. Russia has invested heavily in cognitive warfare: flooding our information spaces with doubt, fatigue, false equivalences. Their message is not always "Russia is right." Sometimes it is simply: "Nothing is clear. Everyone is corrupt. Why should we care?"

We need to tell this story better - and tell it with conviction. Ukraine's resilience is extraordinary. Europe's support, while sometimes slow, has been consequential. The sanctions are biting. The arms are helping. More needs to be done. But we must help Ukraine stand tall, and we must make Russia's invasion fail - not only on the battlefield, but in the minds of citizens across Europe.

This battle for minds is not only about Ukraine. It is being fought in every one of our democracies. Russia does not only want to win on the ground in Ukraine - it wants to win in our parliaments, in our newsrooms, in our elections.

It funds political forces that, once in power, will dismantle democratic institutions from the inside... Building resilience against this - educating citizens, protecting electoral integrity, exposing foreign interference, defending democracies - is a European security imperative.

Lithuania has understood Russia's nature for decades. Moldova knew it too. That shared clear-sightedness is exactly what Europe needs more of today: a Union that is united, strong, and honest about the threats it faces. Because in the face of an aggressive empire, Europe must be the place where people matter, where sovereignty is respected, and where nations defend each other.

Lithuania has shown what this means in practice - building your own defence, contributing to collective defense, spending what it takes. That is the model. That is the standard Europe needs to hold itself to.

Distinguished audience,

Your country has been among the most consistent voices in support of Ukraine - in Vilnius, in Kyiv, in Brussels, and across the Atlantic. You have not flinched. And Moldova is grateful, because supporting Ukraine is supporting Moldova.

Moldova shares a 1,200-kilometre border with Ukraine. We have watched missiles violate our airspace. We have found Iranian Shahed drones in people's yards and on their roofs.

Since February 2022, over a million Ukrainians have entered Moldova; around 100,000 chose to stay. Our citizens have helped without hesitation, because it is right, and because we understand that Ukraine's survival is inseparable from our own.

But the war next door is only part of what Moldova has been living through. Russia has been waging hybrid war against us for years - financing opposition parties, weaponising energy supply, orchestrating disinformation campaigns, attempting to buy votes and manufacturing chaos.

We have fought back. We won a referendum to anchor EU accession in our Constitution. We won presidential elections. We won parliamentary elections. Our citizens, despite everything, chose Europe.

We have won those battles. But I will not pretend they were easy - or that more are not coming. For how long can a small country like mine, outside the EU, under an active hybrid attack, on the edge of a live war, continue to hold the line?

The honest answer is: not indefinitely. Which is why Moldova's EU accession is not merely a matter of development or aspiration. It is a question of security - ours, and Europe's.

Thirty-six years ago, Lithuania made its choice - to belong to the family of free nations of Europe. It took years of immense effort, solidarity of your fellow Baltic countries, and the steadfast support of your Nordic and other European partners before you joined the EU and NATO in 2004.

And look at what you have built. The prosperity, the freedoms, the institutions. Lithuania today is one of the most dynamic economies in the region - a country that has gone from an occupied republic to a full European member within a single generation. That is a feat of political will, sustained effort, and European solidarity. It is our inspiration.

Moldova has made its choice too. In 2024, our citizens voted in a referendum - under tremendous Russian pressure, under fear of war, under unprecedented election interference - and said yes to Europe. The real majority for the EU in Moldova is larger than the result showed; our adversaries worked hard to suppress it.
Dear friends,

We are doing our homework. We have eliminated our dependence on Russian gas, going from 100% to 0% in only three years. We are reforming our judiciary. We are fighting corruption. We are aligning every sphere of public life to EU standards. The European Commission's progress reports have recognised this. We are told we are the best students in the class.

And so here is my plea - and I say it openly, in this parliament, on this anniversary:

We are not asking for more than the chance you had. We are not asking for more than the support you received - including from your Nordic neighbours, who stood by you when it mattered. Perhaps you had more time. And that was also a time of peace.

In those days we were not lucky enough to have leaders who could show us the way to the EU. So we are catching up now. But that means working under wartime conditions, under active destabilisation, at a moment when the world is less stable than it has been in decades. It means running against the clock.

Moldova will be safer inside the European Union. And the EU will be stronger with Moldova inside it. A democratic, stable Moldova anchors a strategically vital piece of this continent's eastern flank. Our 1,200-kilometre border with Ukraine should not be a liability - in the hands of a trusted European partner, it is an asset.

A stable, integrated Eastern Europe is not just today's security; it is the foundation of tomorrow's peace. This is why enlargement cannot wait. In a world this unstable, leaving democratic nations in grey zones is a risk Europe cannot afford. Europe's strength is its unity - countries small and large, east and west, together.

And this is where Lithuania's voice carries weight. Lithuania has been one of Moldova's strongest advocates. We feel this. We are grateful. And we count on your continued voice - in Brussels, in the European Council, in every room where our future is discussed - to keep the process credible, the standards high, and the door open to those who have truly earned their place.

Honourable members of the Seimas,
In May 1990, the parliament of a country that was not yet free looked at what you had done and said: we see you, we stand with you, your freedom is legitimate.

Now it is Moldova that is reaching for its place in the family of free European nations - with the same conviction, the same stubbornness, the same refusal to accept that our place is anywhere other than inside the European Union.

You gave us an example in 1990. Please, help us follow it now.

Ačiū. Thank you.