News

On 24 October, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania summoned the chargé d'affaires of the Russian Embassy in Lithuania Aleksander Elkin and handed a note of protest over the destruction of a memorial plaque to the former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania, Archbishop Mečislovas Reinys in a cemetery of the Russian city of Vladimir.

Representatives of Lithuania's Foreign Ministry noted that it was not the first time that monuments honouring the victims of the Stalinist totalitarian regime were being demolished in Russia. It can only be seen as acts of contempt for the historical truth and the memory of the victims. Therefore, Lithuania's Foreign Ministry called on competent Russian authorities to restore the destroyed monuments.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs also expressed disappointment that at the same time as monuments to the victims of the Soviet repression were being destroyed in one region of Russia, a memorial was unveiled in the Kaliningrad region to the Russian imperial statesman Mikhail Muravyov, who became known for his brutal suppression of the Uprising of 1863-64, sentenced many insurgents to death and exiled thousands to Siberia.

In April, Russia demolished a monument to deportees from Lithuania and Poland buried in Perm. In addition, in May, a Polish monument and a Lithuanian cross were dismantled in a village in Irkutsk region - Pivovarikha - at a site dedicated to the Soviet Terror victims of 1937.

Lithuania's representatives requested the competent authorities of the Russian Federation to clarify the circumstances of vandalism in the city of Vladimir as soon as possible, bring the perpetrators to justice and urgently restore the memorial plaque to Reinys.