Vilnius mayor asks agencies to assess Morgenstern security risk

Vilnius Mayor Valdas Benkunskas has asked Lithuania’s State Security Department and police to assess whether Russian rapper Alisher Morgenstern poses a threat to national security and public order, LRT reported.

Morgenstern is planning to perform in Vilnius on October 31 following a court ruling that overturned a 10-year ban on his entry to Lithuania.

The Lithuanian Supreme Administrative Court granted the rapper’s appeal in April and annulled a decision by the Migration Department. The court found that the department had improperly relied primarily on information provided by the Foreign Ministry when assessing the threat to national security.

The State Security Department, which is legally responsible for carrying out such assessments, had not issued an assessment in the case. The court therefore concluded that the entry ban had been based on information from an institution that was not competent to provide it.

“In the fifth year of Russia’s war against Ukraine, a Russian performer, Morgenstern, is trying to come to Vilnius for the fourth time,” Benkunskas wrote on Facebook on Monday. “It is absurd and a mockery of the state.”

He shared an image advertising Morgenstern’s planned concert and said he had asked the State Security Department and police to assess the potential risks to national security and public order.

Based on those assessments, Benkunskas called on the Foreign Ministry and Interior Ministry to ban the rapper from entering Lithuania.

The mayor said the Regional Administrative Court had earlier found the entry ban justified, while the Supreme Administrative Court overturned it because of procedural violations.

“The violations can certainly be corrected and the principled position defended, but I do not currently see any real action to do so,” Benkunskas said. He called for the issue to be addressed systematically and urged the Foreign Ministry and Parliament to act quickly.

When it overturned the ban, the Supreme Administrative Court also ruled that Morgenstern’s inclusion on other countries’ lists, information from public sources, and his previous statements or creative work did not in themselves prove a threat to Lithuania’s national security.

BNS reported that Morgenstern had repeatedly expressed support for Russian President Vladimir Putin. After Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, however, he criticised Russia’s military actions in his songs. Russia designated the rapper a “foreign agent” in May 2022.