Lithuanian president to meet with Mission Siberia team

  • 2019-07-15
  • BNS/TBT Staff

VILNIUS - Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda is meeting with the Mission Siberia team on Monday. 

This continues the tradition, set up by former President Dalia Grybauskaite, of annual meetings with participants of the mission before the start of each expedition, Aistis Zabarauskas, the president's spokesman, told BNS.  

"We just continue the tradition", he said.

This year's ten-day expedition is set to begin on July 17. 

Just as last year, the participants of the civic initiative will go to Kazakhstan after Russia has refused to issue them with visas for the second year in a row.

The team had planned to travel to Krasnoyarsk to visit the graves of Lithuanian deportees and political prisoners buried in the Siberian region.

Over 150 Lithuanian burial sites in Russia, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan been tended since the launch of Mission Siberia expeditions back in 2006.

Some 280,000 people from Lithuania were sent to forced-labor camps or deported during the Soviet occupation period.