VILNIUS, Oct 22, BNS–Lithuania’s President Dalia Grybauskaite said in an interview to Israeli media that it is Russian President Vladimir Putin’s deeds, not words that should be taken into consideration.

She spoke when asked by i24news.tv to advise Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the relations with Russia.

“Usually our experience with today’s Russia led by Mr. Putin, we usually say ‘don’t believe what they say, just try to check what they do’,” the Lithuanian president said, adding that Putin’s actions in Syria is not a war against the Islamic State but an attempt to support the regime of Syrian President Bashar al Assad.

She also said that the West should rethink its actions with regard to Russia. In Grybauskaite’s words, the lack of leadership in the Western world has led to a vacuum that Putin is striving to fill.

“I think that the problem of lack of leadership is seen not only in your region but also in Europe, and exactly because of that we’ve got the very difficult situation in Ukraine, we still have a difficult situation on our borders, in (the Russian region of) Kaliningrad where Russia is exercising and trying to frighten us,” said Grybauskaite.

“I think the West, which was trying to stick only to sanctions, probably did not do everything possible. We’ve got a mess in Libya, now we are facing probably an even larger mess in Syria. So I think that for us in the West we have to rethink our actions,” the Lithuanian president concluded.