A Lithuanian court on Tuesday sentenced three Russian and Estonian citizens to prison after convicting them of defacing a monument to an anti-Soviet partisan leader while assisting a foreign state in actions against Lithuania.
The Kaunas Regional Court ruled that the men desecrated a monument honouring Adolfas Ramanauskas-Vanagas, a prominent commander of Lithuania’s postwar resistance to Soviet occupation. The court found that their actions amounted to aiding another state in “activities hostile to Lithuania”.
Judge Daina Dyburienė said the court sentenced Nikolai Silin to a combined prison term of three years, Anton Patrakov to four years and Konstantin Venkov to two and a half years.
All three were found guilty on multiple charges, including assisting a foreign state in actions against Lithuania, destruction or damage of property, and desecration of a grave or another site of public reverence.
After crediting time already spent in detention, pretrial custody and under a European arrest warrant since October and November last year, the defendants will serve sentences that are about 14 months shorter than the terms imposed, the court said.
The verdict can be appealed within 20 days.
According to prosecutors, the men acted as part of an organised group carrying out tasks assigned by Russia’s military intelligence agency, the GRU, aimed at “destabilising the Lithuanian state”. The court confirmed that the defendants had assisted the GRU in actions against Lithuania.
As reported earlier, Venkov, born in 2005, Silin, born in 1982, and Patrakov, born in 1987, were charged in connection with the defacement of the monument in the southern town of Merkinė. Patrakov is a Russian citizen, while Silin and Venkov hold dual Russian and Estonian citizenship.
Ramanauskas-Vanagas is regarded in Lithuania as a national hero for leading armed resistance against Soviet rule after World War Two.
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