Lithuanian foreign minister in Brussels for EU talks on Middle East, Ukraine

VILNIUS – Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kestutis Budrys is visiting Brussels on Monday to discuss the situation in the Middle East and Russia's war against Ukraine with his EU counterparts.

According to the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry, the main focus of the meeting of the EU Foreign Affairs Council (FAC) will be on Iran and the situation in the Middle East after the United States struck Tehran's nuclear facilities over the weekend.

Budrys said on the eve of the meeting that he would call for applying the US doctrine of "peace through strength" in Ukraine, noting that it had "produced results in Iran."

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha has also been invited to the meeting. Last week, he said that Russia had been rejecting, for more than three months, a proposal from Washington and Kyiv to halt the fighting without preconditions

EU foreign ministers will also discuss the crisis in the Gaza Strip. Some human rights groups accuse Israel of committing genocide in the territory, where war has raged for more than a year and a half following the Islamist group Hamas' attack on October 7, 2023.

The agenda also includes EU policy toward Syria and Libya, a discussion on China and European security, and a review of current affairs, focusing on Georgia.