Vytautas Landsbergis: Freedom Will Come For Belarus, Too

The name of Stanislau Shushkevich will be written there.

Stanislau Shushkevich, the first leader of independent Belarus, who died on Wednesday, did not wait to see the real independence of his country, but freedom will come to Belarus, the first leader of Lithuania after the restoration of independence, Vytautas Landsbergis, believes.

"Shushkevich did not wait for a free Belarus-Gudia (gudy is the ancient name of Belarusians in Lithuanian). The signatory of the Belavezha Accords, one of the three signatories, the verdict that "the USSR has ceased to exist" — and this was the gateway to a possible new, different world — is now gone into complete freedom," Landsbergis wrote on Facebook on Wednesday, writes Delfi.

According to Landsbergis, Lithuania had already been recognized as an independent member of the UN in December 1991, and the then leaders of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus — Boris Yeltsin, Leonid Kravchuk and Stanislau Shushkevich — "turned the last page of the Evil Empire."

Landsbergis noted that Russian President Yeltsin lost the battle against "KGB revanchism," but several years of "the initial march to freedom also inspire Ukraine's current heroic defensive war against its greedy eastern neighbor Muscovy, which is unwilling and unable to change."

"Win, Ukraine. Freedom will come for Belarus-Gudia, too. The name of Stanislau Shushkevich will be written there," Landsbergis said.