Vilnius mayor urges legal ban on performances by artists active in Russia, Belarus

VILNIUS - Vilnius Mayor Valdas Benkunskas on Monday urged the parliament's Committee on National Security and Defense to amend the law to prevent artists who perform in Russia and Belarus from staging concerts in Lithuania.

The capital's mayor is proposing changes to the Law on the Legal Status of Aliens so that grounds for refusing entry would include public cultural, entertainment, commercial or other activities carried out in Russia and Belarus after the Kremlin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

"Recent cases in Vilnius alone - involving rappers Morgenshtern and Gio Pika - show we lack an effective mechanism to protect Lithuania's information and cultural space from individuals sympathetic to the Kremlin regime," the mayor wrote, calling the situation "embarrassing" and criticizing the need for ad hoc interventions.

He said event organizers are driven by profit, underscoring the need for national-level legal tools to curb the spread of hostile states' soft power in Lithuania.

As reported by BNS, Interior Minister Vladislav Kondratovic last week banned rapper Georgiy Dzioyev, known by his stage name Gio Pika, from entering Lithuania.

The ban was imposed under the Law on the Legal Status of Aliens, which allows Lithuania to bar a foreign national from entry for up to five years if there are serious grounds to believe the person actively supports or takes part in actions by a foreign state that violate international law.

Lithuania added Russian rapper Alisher Morgenshtern to its blacklist last November. The performer challenged the entry ban in court, but his complaint was rejected.