Lithuanian parliament to consider ban on artists working in Russia, Belarus

Antanas Kandrotas, who is currently on trial in Lithuania and unexpectedly travelled to Minsk in early May, has surfaced in Belarus alongside controversial Latvian politician Aleksejs Rosļikovs. The two men first established ties during the Covid-19 pandemic and, together with associates in Estonia, helped organise pro-Russian movements.

“The people who bring flowers, all those elderly people, are persecuted by various neo-fascists and neo-Nazis. The government views this positively. It is very sad that people in a neighbouring country are not allowed to celebrate their holiday,” Kandrotas said about May 9 celebrations in an interview with Belarusian state media.

Standing beside him was Edikas Jagelavičius, an associate of Algirdas Paleckis, who was imprisoned in Lithuania for spying for Russia. Jagelavičius fled to neighbouring Belarus in 2022, earlier than Kandrotas.

Lithuania’s State Security Department (VSD) previously said Jagelavičius has not returned to Lithuania because he could face criminal liability over a visit to Russian-occupied Donbas and document forgery linked to the establishment of the International Forum of Good Neighbourhood Association.

Shortly after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the organisation arranged trips to Belarus and Russia, where they met with officials, including Alexander Lukashenko.

In autumn 2021, Kandrotas and Jagelavičius took part in demonstrations in support of Paleckis, who was then on trial, at Lukiškės Square and outside the LRT offices.

Documents show that after fleeing Lithuania, Jagelavičius received funding from Pravfond, a foundation established by decree of Russian President Vladimir Putin. He was presented as a defender of Russian speakers’ rights abroad.

Now, in 2026, both men appeared at a Belarusian state media programme, answering questions about Lithuania allegedly banning May 9 commemorations and “rewriting history”.

Jagelavičius said it began after 2000.

“But persecution really started after Maidan in 2014 and after the special military operation began. That is when they started destroying this holiday,” he said. “People celebrated it quietly because they understood that if they stopped doing so, they would bring this terrible war into their own homes and their own country.”

Claims that people are persecuted for marking Victory Day – one of the most important ideological holidays in Russia and Belarus – are just one of many themes Kandrotas has promoted through Belarusian state media. The message closely mirrors Kremlin propaganda narratives.

In other interviews with official regime outlets and online channels, Kandrotas repeated a range of familiar propaganda talking points.

“The people and the government are two different things: there have been so many protests, people are resisting,” Kandrotas said, repeating claims that Lithuania is supposedly a democracy while Belarus is a dictatorship, but adding that “if we had your dictatorship, everything would be fine”.

At a press conference broadcast by Sputnik, the Kremlin-backed outlet banned in Lithuania, he asked the channel to help spread information as widely as possible about what he described as the persecution of the opposition in Lithuania, meaning people like himself.

In Belarus, Kandrotas also commented on issues important to the regime, including fertiliser transit and energy policy.

“Thank you for building a nuclear power plant,” Kandrotas said. “We hope you will sell us electricity cheaply. And we will allow the transit of potash fertilisers. Those are friendly and business-like relations.”

In another interview, he claimed that Lithuania was not an independent state and would simply do whatever the Americans told it to do.

Across many of his appearances on regime-linked channels, Kandrotas also argued that Lithuania is provoking Belarus into taking a harsher stance.

Associate echoes identical narratives

Kandrotas, who has spent more than a month actively repeating standard Kremlin propaganda narratives, did not arrive in Belarus alone.

At roughly the same time, a Latvian citizen and former member of the Saeima and Riga City Council, Aleksejs Rosļikovs, also fled to Belarus.

Like Kandrotas, Rosļikovs is facing criminal proceedings in his home country.

Last year, while the Latvian parliament was debating a declaration on Soviet-era Russification policies, Rosļikovs caused outrage.

He criticised the declaration and declared, in Russian, that “the Russian language is our language, and there are more of us”, before making an obscene gesture.

Videos recorded by the former Latvian politician in Belarus, where he travelled alongside Kandrotas, contain statements nearly identical to those promoted by the Lithuanian activist.

“Today, the Baltics were chosen as a new theatre of operations where provocations were being planned,” and “Europe was provoking Russia into opening a second front,” Rosļikovs said.

The rhetoric of Kandrotas and Rosļikovs frequentl…