ABSTRACT
Close relations with Ukraine and other Eastern European countries striving to get closer to the EU had been a priority mission of Lithuanian diplomats long before Grybauskaitė’s presidency. Many Lithuanian diplomats and politicians believe in the necessity to distance Ukraine from Russia and bring it closer to the EU. Although Grybauskaitė’s initial attitude towards the possibility of a Ukrainian integration into the EU was sceptical, she eventually accepted this long-held objective of the Lithuanian diplomacy as part of her own responsibility. Grybauskaitė’s personal efforts to promote Ukraine’s rapprochement with the EU and ensure the signing of the Association Agreement in 2013 could be viewed as a typical attempt to change established structural conditions, that is, Ukraine’s geopolitical dependence on Russia. This kind of a diplomatic mission is also related to an intuitive eagerness of a small state to be relevant on the larger stage of international affairs. However, Lithuania’s role as a moderator, as commonly adopted by some small states in international conflicts, was constrained by the international structure.
