The two countries have had generally friendly ties since the fall of communism in 1989 and Lithuania regaining independence in 1991 after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Warsaw’s ostentatious disappointment with Vilnius’ decision not to support the Russo-Polish initiative to lift the visa regime for the residents of Kaliningrad region has marked the beginning of a freeze in the bilateral relations.

 For months Lithuanian politicians and diplomats have been openly talking about their conviction that a new Polish leadership – composed of members of the liberal party, Civic Platform – would change its foreign policy after the presidential election. And they were right: after July Warsaw paid more attention to Berlin and Moscow than to Vilnius and the latter to Minsk, that is trying to make the Klaipeda oil terminal suitable for importing Venezuelan oil to Belarus.

 Even though the new Polish Chief of State Bronislaw Komorowski stems from an old noble Lithuanian family and does not hide his feelings for his historical homeland, he is not someone who is capable of implementing an independent policy, the way that President Lech Kaczynski did, wrote Audrius Baciulis on weekly Veidas.

 On Wednesday Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski criticised Lithuania in unusually blunt terms for European Union partners, saying its Baltic neighbour was failing to live up to its commitments either to ethnic Poles or to Polish investors. Some days before meetings among diplomats were postponed until local Poles were allowed to write their names in official documents using Polish letters.