Kaunas: Three men in Lithuania have been sentenced to prison terms for vandalizing a monument to anti-Soviet resistance leader Adolfas Ramanauskas-Vanagas (1918-1957). A court in Kaunas, the country's second-largest city, found two men with dual Estonian-Russian citizenship and one Russian citizen guilty of aiding and abetting acts against the Lithuanian state.

According to Ghana News Agency, the public prosecutor's office stated that the three men-sentenced to four, three, and two-and-a-half years in prison-allegedly acted as part of an organized group on behalf of the Russian military GRU intelligence service. The monument in Merkine, southern Lithuania, was defaced with red paint in early 2024. This act was reportedly aimed at destabilizing the situation in Lithuania, a NATO member state.

The court deemed these allegations to be proven, although the defendants denied the claims. Lithuania's security authorities have also reported that the men, arrested in Estonia's capital Tallinn, are suspected of committing similar offenses in other Baltic states.

Ramanauskas-Vanagas is honored in Lithuania as a freedom fighter and is considered a national hero. During and after World War II, he was one of the resistance leaders of the organizations known as the Forest Brothers, who opposed the Soviet occupation regime. Ramanauskas-Vanagas was executed by the Soviet secret service, the KGB, in 1957.