Algirdas Paleckis is a Lithuanian politician and leader of the political movement The Dawn of Justice. He is suspected of and once the court convicted him for spying for Russia in July 2021.
In 2018, several Lithuanians were arrested and accused of spying for Russia, the Baltic state’s chief prosecutor stated, pulling an angry reaction from Moscow. One of the suspects was Algirdas Paleckis, a politician known for pro-Russian views and has challenged Lithuania’s membership in NATO and the European Union.
The Lithuanian authorities asserted against granting bail because Paleckis had lived in Moscow, had contacts, and could flee from the country. Paleckis was freed from supervision in April 2020. On 27 July 2021, Šiauliai district court found Paleckis guilty and convicted him to six years in prison. The Lithuanian Court of Appeal supported the conviction on 6 May 2022. The Supreme Court of Lithuania approved his sentence, although shrinking it to 5 years and 6 months in prison.
Regarding the case, Lithuania’s Prosecutor General’s Office stated that the defendants, operating in an organized group with a Russian intelligence officer and other Russian citizens, including one found culpable in the January 13, 1991 crackdown case, allegedly organised information of interest for Russian intelligence in Lithuania between February 2017 and October 2018 for monetary and other remuneration.
Similarly, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova called the detention “another Russophobic move” and a “reversal of democratic rights and freedoms” in Lithuania. She did not demonstrate the grounds for those statements. Since 2014, when Russia expanded concerns among neighbours about its intentions by seizing Crimea and supporting separatists in a war in eastern Ukraine, Lithuanian courts have sentenced five people to spying for Russia or Belarus.
Moreover, in 2011 Lithuanian authorities charged Paleckis for his denial of Soviet aggression against Lithuania. As a feature of his journalistic research, Paleckis declared he had found several witnesses and ballistic reviews that seemed to indicate that there were Lithuanian government snipers on the roof near the Vilnius TV centre who were attacking civilians with hunting rifles during the January Events.
As of early 2024, he was being tried again for public approval of international crimes, after he conducted a phone interview claiming that the Russian invasion of Ukraine occurred because of the “U.S. desire to squeeze it like a lemon”. The prosecutor also notes enough data to state that Paleckis was slandering the post-war period of Lithuanian partisan armed resistance against the USSR.
