Man who traveled to Minsk with Paleckis associates: 'We said we stand for peace'

VILNIUS – A man who traveled to Belarus with the founders of the now-dissolved International Forum of Good Neighborhood told the Vilnius Regional Court on Thursday that his intention was to express support for peace.

The court continued hearings in a trial in which Erika Svencioniene and Kazimieras Juraitis, the Forum's founders, and Valery Ivanov, the former leader of the pro-Soviet organization Yedinstvo, are charged with aiding a foreign state to act against Lithuania. 

"I saw nothing wrong with going to Belarus and saying that we stand for peace," Arturas Lukjanciukas testified in court.

The witness said he met Svencioniene for the first time on the trip to Belarus and initially claimed he covered his own travel expenses. However, he later retracted that statement, saying he only paid for food and fuel.

He said he learned about the trip from public sources and that Svencioniene handled the formal travel arrangements.

According to Lukjanciukas, the Forum's members were received in Belarus as an official presidential delegation. He also said he felt no moral pressure while in Belarus – only after returning to Lithuania.

Members of the now-dissolved association, founded by Algirdas Paleckis, a controversial former politician and diplomat convicted of preparing to spy for Russia, traveled to Belarus in 2022.

At the time, Darius Jauniskis, the director of the State Security Department, said that people "know exactly what they are doing" when they go to hostile countries to "build friendly relations". 

The Forum's members have also visited Moscow.

"My rights have been violated since elementary school, nothing has changed in 35 years. (...) I would go to Belarus and Moscow again," Lukjanciukas said, adding that he feels harassed by Lithuanian authorities.

The man dismissed the charges as politically motivated and insisted that all the defendants are innocent.

The Prosecutor General's Office said in December 2023 that the pre-trial investigation had gathered evidence proving that Juraitis and Svencioniene, acting in a group of accomplices, helped Russia and Belarus and their organizations to act against Lithuania on more than one occasion in 2022.

Svencioniene is also charged with publicly condoning, denying, or grossly trivializing international and Soviet crimes. 

According to investigators, she and co-defendant Ivanov in early 2024 took part in a TV program on the events of January 13, 1991. 

Svencioniene, Juraitis, and Ivanov deny all charges.

Under the Criminal Code, a conviction for aiding a foreign state to act against Lithuania carries a prison sentence of two to seven years.