Lithuania Calls Putin's U.N. Speech 'Neo-Stalinist'

Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaite on Tuesday slammed her Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin for a speech he delivered at the United Nations General Assembly that she said was reminiscent of Soviet-era totalitarianism.

The outspoken leader of the formerly Soviet-ruled, EU state said Putin's criticism of the West suggested he "was still living in the 20th century".

"I would even call it a 'neo-Stalinist' speech when dictatorships are praised, where democracy is criticised and the West is blamed for everything," Grybauskaite said, drawing a comparison with dictator Joseph Stalin.

"We have heard this rhetoric for almost 100 years, and nothing has changed," she told Lithuania's LRT public broadcaster according to segments released by her office.

In his first speech to the U.N. General Assembly in a decade, Putin on Monday rallied support for Syrian President Bashar Assad and called for an international coalition against Islamic State jihadists.

Putin also slammed NATO's eastern enlargement into countries that lay behind the Iron Curtain a quarter century ago and warned against "exporting" democratic revolutions.

Lithuania, the first republic to break free from the Soviet Union in 1990, joined the European Union and NATO in 2004 and is now firmly anchored in the West.