A network of pro-Kremlin activists in Lithuania continues to operate unopposed, according to a recent investigation by LRT. Despite the Russian invasion of Ukraine, members of its groups have recently met with Alexander Lukashenko in Minsk and have visited Moscow. So far, Lithuania's law enforcement has remained silent.
Jonas Valaitis, editor of the human rights website jarmo.net, has been appealing to the Lithuanian Prosecutor General’s Office to open a pre-trial investigation into Marius Gabrilavičius. He runs a website and claims that Ukraine is currently undergoing a “cleansing of leftists”.
Valaitis is convinced that such statements should lead to criminal liability under Article 170 of the Criminal Code – the denigration and denial of international crimes. The Prosecutor’s Office started an investigation, but closed it after Gabrilavičius said he did not know there was a war in Ukraine.
Meanwhile, his website still peddles well-known narratives spun by the Russian regime and spreads disinformation about the coronavirus pandemic.
“The Prosecutor’s Office missed an opportunity to show it was capable of punishing those who openly support the Russian regime and its war,” Valaitis told LRT.lt. “Perhaps the office would like to tell its Ukrainian [counterparts] such phrases are protected by law here?”
A network of pro-Kremlin activists
As LRT’s Investigations Team showed last year, there is a network of closely connected individuals in Lithuania who have been at the forefront of spreading pro-Kremlin propaganda.
Members of this network claim that the current Lithuanian government is illegitimate and have also rallied against NATO, the United States, and the European Union. Some of them have also been labelled a threat to national security in the yearly reports published by the country’s intelligence agency, the State Security Department (VSD).
Despite accusations, there is no proof that Russia is funding these groups. Although, a prominent figure in the network, Algirdas Paleckis, has been found guilty of spying for the Kremlin.
Paleckis is a founder of the International Forum for Good Neighbourhood whose members recently travelled to Minsk and Moscow. The Prosecutor’s Office recently opened an investigation into whether the organisation may be engaging in anti-state activities.
“The composition of the group is heterogeneous,” the VSD said about pro-Russian activists in its report. “Some of the individuals participate in its activities because of their ideological convictions, some because of potential opportunities to benefit financially in the future by cooperating with the authoritarian regimes of Minsk and Moscow.”
So far, however, the Forum for Good Neighbourhood has been the only to be investigated by prosecutors.
“The main entity that identifies such cases [of acts against the state] is the VSD,” said Andrius Nevera, a lawyer and professor at Mykolas Romeris University (MRU) in Vilnius.
“Most of the time, pre-emptive activities are carried out to prevent espionage cases from developing. As a result, there are not that many [convictions],” he added.
In the thirty years since Lithuania’s independence, only two cases have centred on the “work and organising of anti-constitutional groups”. Neither has led to conviction.
One of them was in 2018.
A court in Klaipėda investigated Žilvinas Razminas for allegedly creating organisations to overthrow Lithuania‘s “constitutional order”. In the process, the law enforcement had to analyse his online activities and agitation leaflets, which included slogans such as, “for a national and socialist revolution”.
In the end, however, the court acknowledged that his activities did not call for a violent uprising and only handed him and his colleague, Oleg Titorenko, lighter sentences for inciting hatred. Another individual, Giedrius Grabauskas, who kept these leaflets at home escaped punishment entirely.
Later, Grabauskas became known in Russian government-controlled media as a journalist fighting for freedom of expression and for being allegedly persecuted by Lithuanian law enforcement.
Finally, he came under investigation again for defaming the memory of Lithuania’s partisans in an articles he wrote for Rossya Segodnia. He then left for Russia.
According to Nevera, even if prosecutors could prove in court that they received funding from Russia, it would not be enough for a sentence for any anti-state activities.
“The legal framework is sufficient to prevent very clear and high-risk acts at the level of criminal law. But if we are talking about a lower level, for example, media outlets that have contact with Russia, then this is probably the field of the VSD activity,” the lawyer said.
What’s a threat to national security?
The term “anti-state activity” has been popularised through the annual reports published by the VSD, which identify individuals, groups, and even countries that allegedly pose a threat to Lithuania.
Words “threat to state security” are found in the law of the VSD itself, which sets out what the intelligence service does.
The law also stipulates that, for example, a foreign national posing a threat to state security cannot enter the country.
Now, Lithuania is mulling legislation that would enable authorities to take away citizenship from people who acquired it as adults – for example, athletes with dual nationalities – for “threatening the security and interests of the Lithuanian state”. The proposal was registered by the ruling conservatives, the Homeland Union party, following outrage that the ice dancing pair of Margarita Drobiazko and Povilas Vanagas, who have represented Lithuania at international and Olympic competitions, took part in a show in Russia. Specifically, the bill was targeting Russian-born Drobiazko who received the Lithuanian citizenship in 1993.
However, Nevera believes this could amount to a breach of an international convention that aims to reduce the number of stateless persons.
“The wording [of the bill] is abstract and open to interpretation,” he said. According to Nevera, it’s unclear what would amount to anti-state activity and it could threaten freedom of speech.
“If someone merely expresses a different opinion, the question is whether this is anti-state activity,” he said.
Gediminas Grina, a former head of the VSD, said that if the intelligence agency named someone in its annual report, this did not mean it should lead to prosecution.
“A threat to state security or a potential threat to state security is a separate category from a crime,” he said.
“Each person can imagine a threat in a different way. For example, the VSD once declared China a threat. As far as I understood from the reactions of politicians, they did not take it seriously. There is no crime, it is a question of political attitude,” Grina said.
According to him, the public’s expectations from the intelligence service can be unreasonable.
“The VSD is an intelligence agency, it is interested in what is not visible to the public,” Grina said. “Intelligence institutions are not law enforcement institutions.”
Its public reports are only meant to shape national policy, he said.
“If politicians do not react to the problem, there is nothing the intelligence agencies can do. We are not in Russia – many would like to make the VSD into a Russian FSB, but we live in a different world,” Grina added.
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