Lithuania lodges protest with Russia over demolition of memorial in Tomsk

Lithuania's Ministry of Foreign Affairs has summoned the chargé d'affaires of the Russian embassy and lodged a protest over the demolition of a memorial stone honouring Lithuanian deportees in the Russian city of Tomsk.

Source: Lithuanian public broadcaster LRT, as reported by European Pravda

Details: Lithuania's Foreign Ministry reported that on 19 April, a monument was demolished in Russia that had been created in 2016 by sculptor Tadas Gutauskas at the Square of Memory of Victims of Political Repression in Tomsk.

Along with the memorial to Lithuanian deportees, memorials to Estonian, Kalmyk, Latvian and Polish deportees were also removed from the square, as was the Stone of Sorrow dedicated to the victims of Russian Bolshevik terror.

Following this, Lithuania's foreign policy ministry summoned the chargé d'affaires of the Russian embassy and handed him a note of strong protest.

The Lithuanian ministry noted that this is not the first instance of monuments to victims of the Stalinist regime being demolished in Russia.

"Lithuania views this as an attempt to distort historical truth and to show contempt for the memory of the victims of the Soviet totalitarian regime," the ministry's statement reads.

Background:

• At the end of December 2025, a Lithuanian court sentenced three Russian and Estonian nationals to prison, finding them guilty of damaging a monument to an anti-Soviet partisan leader and assisting a foreign state in actions against Lithuania.
• In early March, a provocative inscription in Belarusian appeared on a building in Vilnius where the restoration of Lithuanian independence was proclaimed in 1918.

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