Grybauskaitė says Lithuania wants better relations "but only with mutual respect preserved." The Baltic country is disrespected by Moscow, the Lithuanian president says.
Asked about relations with Putin, Grybauskaitė recalled their meeting in 2010. "I met with him and talked to him once about 15 minutes in Helsinki in 2010. The fact that he only makes demands for us is not a good sign," Grybauskaitė told the Politiken daily.
"No foreign policy can ignore another country's interests. We have to renew relations with Russia but on the basis of mutual respect. We miss respect from Russia. It's like a gap between the Western and Eastern way of thinking," the president said.
The translation of the interview was published on the president's website on Thursday.
Following the 2010 meeting with the then Russian Prime Minister Putin, Grybauskaitė said she rejected his proposal to jointly build a new nuclear power plant in the Russian region of Kaliningrad.
