If the Mongols of China invade Taiwan, a ruling party MP from the small Baltic state has declared, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania will destroy Mongol Moscow.
Matas Maldeikis chairs the parliamentary committee for relations with Taiwan and has antagonized China before by leading a delegation of lawmakers to the disputed island in 2021.
If the Mongols attack Taiwan, we will retaliate by destroying the small Mongol village called Moscow, Maldeikis tweeted last week, as the Chinese military began exercises around the island. The Grand Duchy of Lithuania stands with Taiwan! He added a portrait of the 14th century Lithuanian king Algirdas.
While calling the Russians Mongols a common racist trope in the Baltic states and Ukraine, applying the same label to the Chinese is somewhat novel. He has been a champion for the cause of Taiwan since he was elected to the Seimas parliament in 2020.
The lawmaker lists himself as the head of Parliamentary Groups for Relations with Taiwan and Democratic Russia in his Twitter bio. In November 2021 he led a delegation of Baltic lawmakers to Taiwan, prompting Beijing to formally downgrade diplomatic relations with Vilnius. China had already withdrawn its ambassador in August after Lithuania revealed it would open a de facto Taiwanese embassy.
China banned military drills around Taiwan last week after US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited the island against China's explicit warnings. China regards the island as part of its sovereign territory, even though it has been run by the nationalists since their 1949 defeat in the Chinese Civil War and flight from the mainland in 1949.
Maldeikis also supports the causes of Taiwan and Ukraine, as well as a fan of the medieval Grand Duchy and has a fixation on the Russian city of Smolensk. Lithuania controlled it for a total of 150 years between 1414 and 1654, but eventually renounced its claims to Russia. The Grand Duchy had already merged into the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth by then. The eastern European mega-state was later divided between the neighboring empires Austria, Prussia, and Russia and disappeared in 1791.
Maldeikis is an MP of the ruling Homeland Union TS-LKD party, led by Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis. Both of his parents were MPs in the southernmost Baltic state. Modern Lithuania has a population of 2.8 million, a quarter of the size of the small Mongol village of Moscow.