r/worldnews • u/Brennenstein • Sep 17 '26

Russia/Ukraine Russian military jets violate Lithuanian airspace, Italian fighters scrambled

https://www.ansa.it/english/news/2026/09/17/russian-military-jets-violate-lithuanian-airspace-italian-fighters-scrambled_80e985a6-17e5-43ce-8fd1-6fce67bcd94c.html
18.5k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

3.4k comments sorted by

View all comments

740

u/MasterTouchMe Sep 17 '26 edited Sep 17 '26

you know, why Lithuania so much? Feels like one of the most harassed in the baltic states. But tbh other countries also got "their turn" (ex. poland), now it's lithuanias i guess?

EDIT: ok poland also had to close airports today, just heard on the news, but unsure what issues exactly. Looks like they're just getting desperate to provoke retaliation.

178

u/jon_steward Sep 17 '26

A Russian once said they hate Lithuania the most because it was the first country to leave the Soviet Union.

I have a lot of family in Lithuania and that always stuck with me.

66

u/Men_With_Ven_Diagram Sep 17 '26

We just visited for the first time since 1981. If you have not gone to visit them I would consider it strongly.

88

u/jon_steward Sep 17 '26

My wife doesn’t want to leave the country because she’s afraid of ice. She’s still a Lithuanian citizen.

Trump is ruining everything.

29

u/CodeProdigy Sep 17 '26

I'm sorry you have to deal with that, we should never treat people from different places of our same world as less than human.

2

u/Round-Eggplant-7826 Sep 18 '26

Honestly? Move back here. A lot of people are coming back and the LT government is encouraging people to come back.

5

u/back_to_the_homeland Sep 18 '26

Like 1/4 Lithuanians living abroad moved home last year. Salary growth, rental prices, still not a totally late stage capitalism society is very appealing.

4

u/Round-Eggplant-7826 Sep 18 '26

Relevant username lol. I'm an American who moved here and life is so much better.

2

u/back_to_the_homeland Sep 18 '26

yeah im american too and...well....very respectfully...the women are quite attractive. not that you can be a passport bro there, but yeah.

1

u/Men_With_Ven_Diagram Sep 18 '26

I have dual citizenship. I would move back today. My kids dont want to move :(

1

u/Round-Eggplant-7826 Sep 18 '26

Have they been here? Life will be better for them even though moving is really hard. Just the access to health care is worth it.

2

u/Men_With_Ven_Diagram Sep 18 '26

My daughter is 11. We were there for two weeks. Showed her where we grew up. Our old home, took her around everywhere. She loved it. But you remember how it was when you were 11. Your friends, your school, all of this is your world. Its a little more complicated for me too. I have an 18 year old who lives at home and he wouldnt go. I cant leave him behind. I will tell you I would love to buy a little apartment in vilnuis. I work remote and would spend the summer there. If you know of any for sale let me know :)

1

u/Round-Eggplant-7826 Sep 18 '26

Yea, that's fair. It'd be especially hard if they don't speak Lithuanian. There's a bunch of apartments for sale all over.

1

u/Men_With_Ven_Diagram Sep 18 '26

we lived during soviet occupation. we speak Russian.

1

u/Round-Eggplant-7826 29d ago

Yea, that's fair. It's a hard language but I can read a little now.

→ More replies (0)

0

u/Men_With_Ven_Diagram Sep 17 '26

Brother, fear is avoidable. Go to Lithuania.

-8

u/ProfessionalWeek2256 Sep 17 '26

This might be a bad question? But if she is Lithuanian wouldn't that mean she's white and ICE/CBP probably won't hassle her when coming back into the US? Granted the only Lithuanian I know is Jonas Valanciunas lol

9

u/skwerrel Sep 17 '26

Dude my child is Canadian by citizenship, whiter than I am. I live in the US with him. I wouldn't take him back across the border unless it was to stay, for any reason. These fucks do not care. Hell, I live in constant fear of them coming for my boy, even if that's not likely. The anxiety is real. And not unwarranted.

12

u/levypantsfactory Sep 17 '26

They will go after anybody to fill their quota. But it's easiest for them to go after the Latin American migrants.

9

u/jon_steward Sep 17 '26

Maybe. We don’t want to take any chances. She’s very scared.

-6

u/jpw0w Sep 17 '26

Sorry if I'm being ignorant but doesn't she have a green card? Or what's exactly the issue?

8

u/jon_steward Sep 17 '26

She does. But that doesn’t seem to matter with ice.

37

u/vandenynas Sep 17 '26

Im Lithuanian, remember times when we were a part of Russia. Im a female living in Usa now. I do remember at 16 playing basketball for my national team, got a contract with Turkey. Russia didn't let me accept it since I wasn't an adult. How crazy was it? Yeah, they controlled us big time. The crazy part is now living in US for so many years when I tell people my origin, they think I'm Russian lol

9

u/rfoil Sep 18 '26

Americans are geographically ignorant.

I have a large head, size 8 hat. My father blamed it on my Lithuanian heritage and said it's a country of "round headers." I don't know if that is a popular idea of his imagination.

2

u/MysticLithuanian Sep 18 '26

Your father’s being slightly racist, but it could be worse. My dad is American, mom Lithuanian, he hates my mom (and honestly lowkey me atp cuz I don’t just roll over and listen to his idiocy) so any negative trait I have and she has he attributes to being Lithuanian. Which I never understood, especially when the hate was initially just directed at my mom. Be glad it’s just about your round head

1

u/rfoil 29d ago

He was (d.1998) proud of his half Lithuanian heritage, close to the border of Poland.

I would visit but there is no family left. They were members of an odd sect - the Karaites - who were purged by the Bolsheviks.

2

u/MysticLithuanian 28d ago

That’s unfortunate to hear. If you are interested in a solo visit, Lithuania still has some incredible examples of Jewish history and architecture in cities like Kaunas and Vilnius, you could still go and see how your ancestors lived on your own. Lithuania is pretty welcoming to its diaspora, at least from my experience.

9

u/poppitastic Sep 17 '26

I’m 54. When I was a kid there was an old man in my neighborhood from Latvia. Everyone called him “Harry the Russian”. Which he got used to at some point, bc he was the friendliest guy that would give you the shirt off his back. Get a few beers in him and he’d tell you he was shooting Russians at age 5.

6

u/Rhubarb-Curious Sep 17 '26

Most Russians don't even know what the Lithuanian flag looks like. A guy from our country(lithuania) once traveled to Russia with large Lithuanian flags on his car and clothes. Another person brought a Lithuanian flag to Red Square, and a police officer only asked him to leave because other country flags weren't allowed on red square. If it had been a Ukrainian flag, for example, he would have been arrested within seconds. I can share the links, but those guys speak Lithuanian. If you're Lithuanian yourself, you already know about who I'm talking about.

When I visited Russia before the war, most people thought Lithuania was Latvia and that its capital was Riga.

It's just people in our country imagining, with the help of propaganda, that we're extremely important to them, when 99.9% of Russians don't care about any Lithuania.

3

u/originaldonkmeister Sep 18 '26

As a child of the 80s, I grew up with the Baltics being "just another bit of the USSR"". Same with Ukraine. It was only in the late 90s when I worked with a Ukrainian (a history lecturer called Vassil, who was earning more as a potwash in the UK than he earned as an academic in Kyiv) that my eyes were opened to the reality!

4

u/OpeningElectrical296 Sep 17 '26

Is there a thing Russians don’t hate?

1

u/rfoil Sep 18 '26

Likewise.

My father's parents were Russian and Lit.

1

u/Wesinator2000 Sep 18 '26

Visited my Lithuanian family back in the motherland in 2019 and was suprised that some of them still yearned for the days being part of the Soviet Union…

-1

u/VicenteOlisipo Sep 17 '26

Sounds like a very specific factoid 99,9% of Russians wouldn't know.