The Citizenship Commission has issued a recommendation to strip the Russian-born ice dancer Margarita Drobiazko of Lithuanian citizenship due to her continued performances in Russia. The country’s president, who has the power to revoke her citizenship, said he would do it “in the near future”.
“This issue is absolutely clear to me. So I will do it in the near future,” President Gitanas Nausėda told reporters.
“I think that people who want to carry the light of culture and goodness with the boots of the aggressor should continue to do so without the citizenship of the Republic of Lithuania,” he added.
The ice-dancer, who lives in Russia and received the Lithuanian citizenship in 1993 for representing the country in international competitions, said in an open letter earlier this week that she was not involved in Russian propaganda, but was spreading “the light of culture and goodness”.
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Pranas Žukauskas, chairman of the Citizenship Commission, said that the recommendation to strip Drobiazko of her citizenship was based on the athlete’s actions, rather than her directly expressed or implied positions.
“I think that today [Drobiazko’s] merits [...] appear to be a sad parody in the light of what we saw and see today,” said Nausėda.
“We have to choose sides as we cannot pretend that one thing exists without the other, especially when that culture, or the semblance of it, is created in a state that sheds innocent blood,” the president said.
“We must be principled and adhere to the values we have held since the first days of the war in Ukraine, and we will adhere to them,” he added.
Drobiazko’s citizenship, granted by way of exception 30 years ago, is being reviewed in light of recent legislation that allows revoking the citizenship of a dual citizen if the person publicly expresses support for a state that poses a threat to the security interests of Lithuania or its allies.
Lithuanian authorities say that Drobiazko maintains close professional and personal ties with Tatyana Navka, the wife of Dmitry Peskov, the press secretary of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
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