Six grey granite statues of Soviet World War Two soldiers have been removed from the Antakalnis Cemetery in Vilnius, the city’s municipality said on Friday.
“Although the contractor had planned that it would take until Monday to dismantle and transport the statues, the work was completed much faster, and all the statues were transported to Grinda yesterday afternoon,” Gabrielius Grubinskas, the municipality’s spokesperson, told BNS in a comment.
The statues will be stored by Grinda, a municipal company, until an agreement on their transfer to another location is reached, according to the spokesman.
The municipality is considering handing the removed sculptures over to the National Museum of Lithuania.
The dismantling of the monument to the Red Army soldiers started at Antakalnis Cemetery on Tuesday despite interim measures imposed by the United Nations Human Rights Committee.
The committee imposed the interim measures after it received a petition signed by several people who identified themselves as “ethnic Russians”.
It left the measures in place after Lithuania’s appeal. However, The Interior Ministry and municipal officials insist that the UN committee was misled by the arguments of the petitioners, who claim that the monument will be desecrated and the nearby remains reburied.
Vilnius Mayor Remigijus Šimašius said that “the graves and tombstones will not be touched”, as the removal concerns only the “Soviet propaganda statues”.
The removal works cost 60,000 euros, according to the municipality.
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