Lithuania's public broadcaster LRT reported that Kaunas Regional Court ruled the men desecrated a monument to Adolfas Ramanauskas-Vanagas, a prominent commander of Lithuania's postwar resistance to Soviet occupation.

The statue is located at Merkinė Regional Museum in southern Lithuania and was vandalised with red paint in January 2024.

The court found that their actions amounted to aiding another state in "activities hostile to Lithuania".

Judge Daina Dyburienė on Tuesday said the court sentenced Nikolai Silin to a combined prison term of three years, Anton Patrakov to four years and Konstantin Venkov to two and a half years.

Prosecutors said the men acted as part of an organised group carrying out tasks assigned by Russia's military intelligence agency, the GRU, aimed at "destabilising the Lithuanian state". The court confirmed that the defendants had assisted the GRU in actions against Lithuania.

The verdict can be appealed within 20 days.

Patrakov (1987) is a Russian citizen, while Silin (1982) and Venkov (2005) hold dual Russian and Estonian citizenship. All three were residing in Tallinn and were arrested by Estonian authorities earlier this year, LRT reported in July.

Ramanauskas-Vanagas was a schoolteacher who joined the anti-Soviet partisan resistance in 1945 following the Soviet occupation of Lithuania. He became one of the most prominent commanders in the movement. He was tortured and executed by the KGB in Vilnius in 1957.

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