Russia has been unofficially but systematically dismantling monuments to Polish and Lithuanian victims of Soviet repressions, as well as to Finnish soldiers killed in the Second World War.
Meduza, an independent Russian media outlet based in Latvia, reported that monuments to Lithuanian and other victims disappeared from sites in Yakutsk, Perm Krai, and the Irkutsk region.
“Some officials say the disappearances are only temporary while restoration work is underway, but more often, they claim ignorance and blame anonymous vandals. At the same time, there’s typically no police response when a memorial is damaged or goes missing,” Meduza reported.
For example, local Russian media SakhaDay reported on September 25 that a local monument to exiled Poles and Lithuanians had disappeared. “While this was happening, local officials said they didn’t know who was responsible,” Meduza reported.
In Irkutsk, a monument to the 15,000 to 17,000 murdered political prisoners, including Polish and Lithuanian citizens, disappeared in May.
“Regional officials acknowledged that public workers had removed the two shrines and placed them ‘in storage’ because their installation was deemed illegal,” Meduza said.
Local officials claimed the names of the executed prisoners remain inscribed on the walls of another memorial.
The disappearing monuments mark another milestone in nosediving relations between Moscow and the Baltic states since the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In recent years, Moscow did not grant permits for Lithuania's Mission Siberia participants to visit the graves of deportees.
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