Nausėda, a former banker who was elected president of the Baltic country in 2019, is a staunch critic of the Kremlin and has strongly backed Ukraine’s fight against Russia’s full-scale invasion, calling for stronger Western sanctions on Moscow.

He hit out at Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán last October for shaking hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin, accusing him of “flirt[ing] with a regime who is committing … very cruel atrocities on the territory of Ukraine.”

But Nausėda has advocated for rapprochement with China, after the two countries’ relations soured over a Taiwanese de facto embassy in…