Lithuania calls Moscow court ruling on Baltic resistance figures falsification of history

VILNIUS - Lithuania’s Foreign Ministry has called a Moscow court’s decision to recognize more than a dozen Baltic anti-Soviet resistance participants as "accomplices of Nazi Germany" a falsification of history.

"This is not the first time Russia has falsified history to smear the Baltic states and our freedom fighters, thus trying to divert attention from its war crimes and other atrocities in Ukraine," the ministry said on Wednesday.

According to the ministry, Russia distorts historical facts by relying on biased archival documents and remaining silent about crimes committed by Soviet repressive structures. It said such a campaign was primarily aimed at a domestic Russian audience and sought to indirectly justify its aggression in Ukraine.

In the Siberian city of Yakutsk, a memorial dedicated to Lithuanian and Polish deportees was replaced in September by a monument to Russian soldiers killed in the war in Ukraine, it was reported on Wednesday.

This week, a Moscow court recognized 13 individuals from the Baltic states and several organizations as "accomplices of Nazi Germany in committing war crimes and crimes against humanity against the Soviets during the Second World War."

Among them are Juozas Ambrazevicius, head of the 1941 Lithuanian provisional government, partisan commander Juozas Luksa, writer Bronius Krivickas, who died in the resistance struggle, the Lithuanian Activist Front and the Lithuanian Nationalist Union.

The Moscow court said it made the decision after examining archival documents from various Russian agencies and hearing explanations about the "criminal actions" of the aforementioned individuals and organizations from Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.

Lithuania's military has repeatedly said that the country's historical memory policy attracts the attention of Russian propaganda.