Lithuania's cultmin-designate: I am against bringing existing Russian culture

VILNIUS - Lithuania's Social Democrat Culture Minister-designate Sarunas Birutis says he's against bringing the existing Russian culture to Lithuania.

"I want to make this very clear: I am against bringing the existing Russian culture here at all, especially right now. How are we going to ban it? I think that together we will figure out how to do it, which has not been done so far," he said at a meeting with members of the opposition conservative Homeland Union-Lithuanian Christian Democrats political group in the Seimas on Tuesday.

Birutis regretted the fact that the outgoing government has failed to prevent controversial Russian artists from coming to Lithuania.

"What the former government failed to do was to set up a commission that could select performers coming from Russia," he said.

Following Russia's annexation of Ukraine's Crimea in 2014, a number of Russian artists who have expressed support for the Kremlin's actions and have performed in Crimea or in the separatist republics of Donetsk and Luhansk are not welcome in Lithuania.

Lithuania has sanctioned several Russian artists, including pop singers Filip Kirkorov, Natasha Koroliova and others. However, there are still cases when artists who have supported Russia's war in Ukraine or who have performed in the occupied territories of Ukraine come on tour.

That is why in December 2023, the Seimas Committee on Culture proposed to the government to set up an inter-institutional commission to decide, if necessary, whether a particular Russian or Belarusian performer poses a threat to national security and can perform in Lithuania. However, no such commission has been set up yet.

Birutis also says there's no question of banning the Russian language as it's the mother tongue of part of the people born in Lithuania, as well as of the Ukrainians who have taken refuge in Lithuania.

"We cannot be talking about banning the Russian language, banning religion here in Lithuania, we will certainly not do such things," he said.

The Lithuanian Seimas has adopted amendments allowing the inclusion of persons who have expressed support for a foreign state's aggressive policy in breach of international law on the list of undesirable persons in Lithuania.

The amendments were drafted after it emerged that the Council for Culture had given subsidies for cultural events that had not taken place or had been rescheduled to companies that planned Russian artists Filip Kirkorov and Mikhail Shufutinsky's concerts in Lithuania.