Vilnius Mayor Valdas Benkunskas has asked Lithuania’s Foreign Ministry to add Russian rapper Morgenshtern to the list of undesirable persons, effectively barring him from entering the country ahead of a planned concert in the capital next month.
“We should stop appealing to the organisers’ conscience. It is time to seriously consider Morgenshtern’s arrival in Vilnius,” Benkunskas wrote on Facebook on Friday. “That is why I have asked the Foreign Ministry to assess and consider the possibility of adding this performer to the list of undesirable persons.”
The mayor said he could not “sit idly by and watch as an artist who cannot answer whose Crimea is, who publicly expresses his respect for [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, and who has been added by Ukraine’s Culture Ministry to the list of persons posing a threat to national security” performs in Vilnius.
Benkunskas also called on the Foreign Ministry to review whether the activities of Ready Events, a Latvian-registered company organising the concert, comply with Lithuania’s information security requirements.
Morgenshtern, whose concert in Vilnius is scheduled for November 29, has drawn controversy in several countries over his political statements and past ties to Russian authorities.
The rapper previously expressed support for Putin, but after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, he condemned Moscow’s actions and criticised the war in his songs.
In May 2022, Russian authorities labelled Morgenshtern a “foreign agent”, a designation often used to target government critics.
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