Lithuania has passed a bill authorizing the relocation of Soviet warriors’ burial sites
The Lithuanian parliament has approved amendments to laws that allow the relocation of Soviet warriors’ graves by including them in the list of public places promoting banned ideology.
Under the new rules, the ban on the liquidation of graves and cemeteries listed in the Register of Cultural Property is cancelled if the burial sites are recognized as “propagandizing totalitarian, authoritarian regimes and their ideologies”.
The bill was supported by 89 deputies, five abstained, no one spoke against it.
The amendments were initiated by the residents of Siauliai, who were in favor of moving the remains of 52 Soviet soldiers buried at the entrance to the Cathedral of St. Peter and Paul.
Earlier, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, commenting on the demolition of six steles to Soviet soldiers in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius, said that the authorities of the Baltic states are trying to settle historical scores with Russia and erase the memory of the victory in the Great Patriotic War.
Cases of vandalism against Soviet monuments in the Baltics have become more frequent after the start of the Russian special operation in Ukraine. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, commenting on the situation with the monuments to Soviet soldiers in Latvia and Lithuania, described what was happening as “international disgrace”.