The Lithuanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned the chargé d’affaires of the Russian Embassy and protested against the demolition of a memorial stone in honour of deported Lithuanians in the Russian city of Tomsk.
LRT writes about this, as reported by European Pravda.
The Lithuanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported that on 19 April 2026, Russia demolished a monument created in 2016 by sculptor Tadas Gutauskas at the Square in Memory of Victims of Political Repression in Tomsk.
Along with the monument to the Lithuanian deportees, memorials to the Estonian, Kalmyk, Latvian, and Polish deportees, as well as the “Stone of Sorrow” dedicated to the victims of Russian Bolshevik terror, were also removed from the square.
Following this, the country’s foreign ministry summoned the chargé d’affaires of the Russian embassy and handed him a note of strong protest.
The Lithuanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs noted that this is not the first time that monuments honouring the victims of the Stalinist regime have been torn down in Russia.
The Foreign Ministry, in a statement, said, “Lithuania views this as an attempt to distort the historical truth and desecrate the memory of the victims of the Soviet totalitarian regime.”
In late December 2025, a Lithuanian court sentenced three Russian and Estonian citizens to prison, finding them guilty of damaging a monument to an anti-Soviet partisan leader and assisting a foreign state in actions against Lithuania.
In early March, a provocative inscription in Belarusian appeared on the building in Vilnius where the restoration of Lithuania’s independence was proclaimed in 1918.
Українська правда
