America has a responsibility to stop the war in Ukraine, but has calmly watched rather than taking action against Russian aggression, a leading Lithuanian journalist told a crowd of about 50 on Miami University’s campus March 7.
Rita Miliūtė, 55, started her journalism career in 1991 with the fall of the USSR. She has spent the past two years reporting on the war in Ukraine.
The U.S., Miliūté said, has always had a role as “a defender of democracy and a defender of those who are weaker.” That role is unfulfilled in Ukraine, Miliūté said.
“Where is that great America?” she asked.
Ukraine soldiers, Miliūté said, “were fed with the promises of planes are coming, the weapons are coming, ammunition is coming, and it never happened.”
“They feel abandoned,” she said. “They still hope that the promises will be fulfilled.”
She worries that if Ukraine falls, Lithuania and the rest of Europe could be the next target.
“Lithuanians think very often that [Ukraine] is their destiny that is awaiting,” Miliūté said. “The United States has the power to stop [the war in Ukraine].”
Russian involvement in American elections, Miliūté said, is unlikely.
“I do believe that Russia would like to [influence elections], but I think that America is able to protect its own instrument of democracy,” Miliūté said. “When Trump says ‘I do not believe in elections,’ I see it as a threat to democracy, but not made by Russia.”
Miliūté said that she thinks America will eventually join the war.
Stephen Norris, director of the Havighurst Center for Russian and Post-Soviet Studies, said that these lectures help students gain an understanding about the importance of small countries like Lithuania that play outsized roles in very important issues.
Understanding the role of these countries in international politics can help us understand issues “about NATO, about sovereignty, about democracy,” Norris said.
Miliūtė urged the audience to “explain to your neighbors, to your parents, to your friends who do not care, because [Ukrainians] really need support.”
First-year English literature and political science student Eleanor Jones said the lecture is “crucial” to understanding how this conflict affects the rest of the world.
“It’s something that I think about very often and affects a lot about how I view the world,” Jones said.
According to Miliūtė, Americans often believe the war in Ukraine “isn’t clear.”
“It is clear. Ukraine is attacked,” she said.
After Lithuania became a member of NATO in 2004, Miliūtė said that she worried that her “life as a journalist will be boring.” After Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Miliūtė joined volunteer forces and went to Ukraine as a journalist.
