Lithuania fears "Belarus scenario" in Ukraine

"Unfortunately, the developments in Ukraine are not those that we wanted to see," Brussels portal euractiv.com cited Semaška as saying to a small number of Brussels journalists invited for a press trip to Vilnius.

"There is less and less patience left in the West. And we might really see the Belarus scenario. We had no patience with Belarus, we had no patience with (President Alexander) Lukashenko, we shut the door for the dialogue," the high official said, referring to the fact that the EU didn't recognize the election result back then, shutting the door for further contacts.

Speaking about Grybauskaitė's 2010 visit to Minsk, Semaška said that Lukashenko then received a message to stick to European standards and hold proper elections before the European Union takes its steps.

"Unfortunately, it did not work. Perhaps on our side, we were too impatient. In our work with the opposition, perhaps we gave too much hope to them. It is easier now to talk with the time perspective, but perhaps other tactics would have worked better. If less ambition of what we could have achieved with the regime was there, perhaps we could have agreed on a dialogue with Lukashenko," Semaška added.

According to him, the EU wanted "everything at once", immediately, at the election or after the election, and didn’t have the patience to make small steps, and keep the situation under a certain degree of control.

"Lukashenko got frightened, he started behaving irrationally and we then completely shut the door. And what happened: he went to Russia. He sold some of his assets, but he became more and more dependent on Russia," said the presidential adviser.

"We are moving toward the same scenario with Ukraine," Semaška warned.

Ukraine's administration has lately come under severe criticism from the West for its conduct with the opposition, first of all, imprisoned ex-PM Yulia Tymoshenko.