ARCHIVE – The word “Kaunas” is written in large letters in front of the castle. Photo: Alexander Welscher/dpa/symbol image
Keystone
In Lithuania, three men have been sentenced to several years in prison for vandalizing a monument to the anti-Soviet partisan leader Adolfas Ramanauskas-Vanagas (1918-1957). A court in the second-largest city of Kaunas found two men with dual citizenship (Estonian and Russian) and a Russian citizen guilty of, among other things, aiding and abetting acts against Lithuania. The monument in Merkine in the south of the Baltic EU and NATO country was splashed with red paint at the beginning of 2024.
According to the public prosecutor’s office, the men sentenced to four, three and two and a half years in prison are now alleged to have acted as an organized group on behalf of the Russian military intelligence service GRU. The defacement of the monument was therefore aimed at destabilizing the situation in Lithuania. The court considered these allegations, which were denied by the defendants, to be proven. According to Lithuania’s security authorities, the men arrested in Estonia’s capital Tallinn are also alleged to have committed similar crimes in the other Baltic states.
Ramanauskas-Vanagas is revered in Lithuania as a freedom fighter and is considered a national hero. During and after the Second World War, he was one of the leaders of the partisan organizations known as the “Forest Brothers”, who resisted the Soviet occupation regime. Ramanauskas-Vanagas was executed by the Soviet secret service, the KGB, in 1957.