Lithuania’s Social Democrat Culture Minister-designate Šarūnas Birutis says he is against bringing the existing Russian culture. Last week, he said the country should not censor everything linked to Russian culture.
“I want to make this very clear: I am against bringing the existing Russian culture here, especially right now. How are we going to ban it? I think that together we will figure out how to do it, which has not been done so far,” he said at a meeting with the opposition conservative Homeland Union – Lithuanian Christian Democrats political group in the Seimas on Tuesday.
Birutis said he regretted the fact that the outgoing government has failed to prevent controversial Russian artists from coming to Lithuania.
“What the former government failed to do was to set up a commission that could select performers coming from Russia,” he said.
Last week, Birutis said the country should not censor everything linked to Russian culture, arguing that it also belongs to Lithuania’s Russian-speaking citizens who are not to be blamed for the Russian government’s actions.
Further reading
Lithuania has sanctioned several Russian artists, including pop singers Filip Kirkorov, Natasha Koroliova, and others. However, there are still cases when artists who have supported Russia’s war in Ukraine or who have performed in the occupied territories of Ukraine come to Lithuania.
That is why in December 2023, the Seimas Committee on Culture proposed to the government to set up an inter-institutional commission to decide, if necessary, whether a particular Russian or Belarusian performer poses a threat to national security and can perform in Lithuania. However, no such commission has been set up yet.
The Lithuanian Seimas has adopted amendments allowing the inclusion of persons who have expressed support for a foreign state’s aggressive policy in breach of international law on the list of undesirable persons in Lithuania.
The amendments were drafted after it emerged that the Council for Culture had given subsidies for cultural events to companies that planned concerts of Russian artists Filip Kirkorov and Mikhail Shufutinsky in Lithuania.
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