A Lithuanian court sentenced three men for damaging a statue of resistance hero Adolfo Ramanauskas-Vanagas. Prison sentences can reach up to four years.
A Lithuanian court sentenced three men for damaging a statue of a hero of the resistance against Soviet occupation. The men were accused of acting in favor of Russia for a bribe, which two of them denied. TASR informs according to the report of the AFP agency.
Two Estonian-Russian nationals and one Russian citizen were sentenced to two and a half to four years in prison for aiding another state and damaging a statue of anti-Soviet partisan Adolfas Ramanauskas-Vanagas.
GRU paint
Local media said one of the men admitted to dousing the statue in the town of Merkine with red paint in January 2024 on behalf of Russia’s GRU military intelligence service, while the other two deny the allegations.
The man said he did not know the identity of the person who ordered the vandalism. He was motivated solely by money and allegedly didn’t even know that they were painting a statue of a resistance hero.
The fate of the hero
Ramanauskas-Vanagas was a teacher who joined the anti-Soviet guerrilla resistance after the Soviet occupation of Lithuania. In 1956, he was arrested by the Soviet KGB secret police. He was brutally tortured, sentenced to death and executed in 1957 in Vilnius.
His burial place was unknown for many decades, his remains were identified only in 2018. As a symbol of resistance to the Soviet occupation, he was subsequently buried with state honors.
