Vilnius city. Archival photoMOSCOW, June 9 The Russian Embassy in Lithuania called «blasphemous and barbaric» the decision of the Vilnius city council to demolish the memorial to Soviet soldiers at the largest burial place of Lithuania's liberators. The Vilnius City Council on Wednesday decided to demolish the memorial to Soviet soldiers at the Antakalnis cemetery, where the country's largest burial place for the liberators of Lithuania is located. In May, the mayor of Vilnius, Remigius Simasius, announced that he would initiate the exclusion of six monuments to Soviet soldiers in the capital's cemetery from the register of cultural heritage for their subsequent demolition.In Belarus, they offered Poland and Lithuania to take away Soviet monuments from them «The decision of the Vilnius self-government to dismantle six granite stelae depicting Soviet soldiers of various branches of the armed forces and which are the central element of the memorial complex at the Antakalnis cemetery can only be called blasphemous and barbaric. A hand has risen to the sacred! After all, including the remains of over three thousand Red Army soldiers who died in battles with the Nazis during the liberation of the capital of Lithuania in July 1944. That is, the desire to demolish the grave monuments is indicated! of the Lithuanian political regime,» the diplomatic mission said on its Telegram channel. According to the embassy, this provocation fully fits into the course of the Lithuanian authorities, «which is aimed at manipulating the history of the Great Patriotic War, eradicating the memory of the heroic deed of Soviet soldiers who expelled from the Lithuanian the lands of the fascist invaders and the spaces that have won back for the Lithuanian people, where their new generations now live and raise their children. «To live on the lands obtained by the blood and sweat of Soviet soldiers, and then mutilate the graves of these soldiers is in the spirit of the power elite that has developed in Lithuania over the past thirty years,» the embassy noted.
Ukrainian militants damaged the monument to the Hero of the Soviet Union in Mariupol «Such decisions are not civilized. Think about what kind of memory you will leave for your descendants! Do not cover yourself with shame, including in the eyes of future generations of the Lithuanian people, who, we have no doubt, will appreciate what is happening now,» the embassy stressed. The military memorial on Antakalnis, created in 1951, buried more than three thousand soldiers of the 3rd Belorussian Front, who fell in the summer of 1944 in the battles for the liberation of Vilnius. In total, more than 80 thousand Soviet soldiers who gave their lives in the fight against fascism are buried in the Baltic Republic. Cases of vandalism against Soviet monuments became more frequent after the start of the Russian special operation in Ukraine. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, commenting on the situation with the monuments to Soviet soldiers in Latvia and Lithuania, called what is happening «an international outrage». about the impossibility of demolishing many monuments
