Lithuanian prosecutors said Monday the Baltic state arrested a member of the opposition Conservatives this year on charges of spying for Russia.
The EU and NATO member state of 2.8 million people is one of Ukraine’s staunchest supporters, and fears it could be next in Russia’s crosshairs if Moscow were to win its war against Kyiv.
The suspect, a dual Lithuanian and Russian citizen, was deported as a toddler with his parents to Russia in the 1940s during Lithuania’s Soviet occupation.
“He has dual citizenship of Lithuania and Russia, belongs to… the Union of Lithuanian exiles and political prisoners,” Arturas Urbelis, from the prosecutor general’s office, told reporters.
He said the man is suspected of gathering information starting in 2018 for Russia’s GRU intelligence agency about Lithuanian political parties and defence capabilities, as well as people deported to Russia under Soviet occupation.
“The information collected was not classified but it was significant and in the interest of Russia,” Lithuanian deputy chief of intelligence Remigijus Bridikis told journalists.
Urbelis said the suspect and Russian intelligence operatives had used specialised radios to transmit information via encrypted radio waves.
Authorities refused to reveal the suspect’s identity but two sources speaking on condition of anonymity told AFP he was 82-year-old Eduardas Manovas.
They said he returned to Lithuania in 1997 — a few years after it regained independence — and lived in the northern city of Siauliai.
The chairman of the conservatives told reporters they had asked officials to confirm that Manovas was under criminal investigation, in which case the party would expel him.