On Tuesday, Russia’s chargé d'affaires ad interim Aleksander Elkin was summoned to the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry to protest against the destruction of monuments dedicated to victims of Soviet repressions.
Previously, Russian media reported that a monument was destroyed in Vladimir, west Russia, which had plaques dedicated to Lithuanian, Polish, and Ukrainian victims of Soviet repressions.
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"[Vilnius] noted that it was not the first time that monuments honouring the victims of the Stalinist totalitarian regime were being demolished in Russia,” the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry said.
In April, a monument to Lithuanian and Polish deportees was demolished in Russia's Perm region. In May, a Polish monument and a Lithuanian cross honouring political prisoners and deportees were dismantled in the Irkutsk region's settlement of Pivovaricha,
One of the plaques in Vladimir was dedicated to Mečislovas Reinys. He served as the Lithuanian foreign minister for six months from 1925 to 1926 and lectured at Vytautas Magnus University during the interwar period.
In the post-war years, the archbishop protested against the Soviet suppression of the Church. In 1947, he was sentenced to eight years in prison in Russia, where he later died. Reinys was buried in a mass grave.
Lithuania's Foreign Ministry also "expressed disappointment" that Russia is now building memorials to honour imperial figures. In its Kaliningrad exclave, Russia erected a memorial to Mikhail Muravyov. He is remembered for the brutal suppression of the anti-Tsarist uprising of 1863-64 in present-day Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine.
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