Lithuania’s domestic intelligence agency has accused Russian and Belarusian intelligence services of plotting to carry out violent attacks on Belarusian exiles residing in the country, reported the Kyiv Independent on April 24.

In a statement on April 23, Lithuania’s Department of State Security (VSD) said it had uncovered attempts by Russian and Belarusian intelligence services to target members of the Belarusian diaspora – including a scheme to lure students to remote locations where they would be ambushed and assaulted.

“The organisers are trying to create the appearance of a conflict between two warring forces – Belarusians promoting the ideology of Litvinism, and Lithuanian groups allegedly opposing them,” the VSD said.

Lithuania, which shares a border with Belarus, has become a refuge for over 50,000 Belarusians fleeing the regime of Alexander Lukashenko. Among them is exiled opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who was forced to flee after reportedly defeating Lukashenko in Belarus’s disputed 2020 presidential election.

Vilnius has positioned itself as a supporter of the Belarusian opposition, drawing the ire of the Lukashenko regime in return. Lithuanian authorities have faced a series of retaliatory actions, including a migration crisis manufactured at the border, pressure on ethnic Lithuanians in Belarus, and repeated verbal attacks from the Belarusian leader himself.

According to the VSD, the first documented attempts to incite violence against Belarusians in Lithuania have already taken place. Agents of Russia and Belarus tried to lure Belarussian students into an ambush where they would have been beaten. The agents were given a precise location, timing and details of the students' appearance.

The plan, the VSD alleges, was part of a broader campaign to fabricate the appearance of ethnic or ideological tensions within Lithuania. Central to that effort is the fringe “Litvinism” movement, which Belarusian intelligence is believed to have promoted in 2023. The ideology makes revisionist historical claims, including that Vilnius rightfully belongs to Belarus.

That campaign has already shown visible signs in the capital. Graffiti reading “Vilnius is ours” in distorted Cyrillic script has appeared across the city, and Lithuanian politicians have received threats from alleged Litvinist groups.
In 2024, the campaign escalated further. Acts of vandalism targeted properties tied to the Belarusian community, including a fire set at a Belarusian cultural house and a chapel shot at with pneumatic weapons. Graffiti in flawed Lithuanian demanded that Tikhanovskaya leave the country.

According to the VSD, the planned attacks were to be “the next step in this staged ‘conflict’.”

The broader pressure campaign has contributed to a decline in the Belarusian population in Lithuania. According to the Migration Department, the diaspora shrank from over 62,000 in January 2024 to just under 54,000 in April 2025. In 2024 alone, nearly 600 residence permits were revoked on national security grounds – including for Belarusians with prior military service or those employed in non-sensitive civilian roles such as call centre staff at banks.

This pressure has been building for some time now, with Lithuania’s ‘patients’ [sic] with Belarusian seemingly wearing down.

The revelations underscore growing concerns in Vilnius about hybrid threats from Russia and Belarus, as the Kremlin seeks to destabilise NATO’s eastern flank using covert influence, information warfare and proxy provocations.