81 Soviet soldiers’ remains exhumed from Vievis centre

Archaeologists have exhumed the remains of 81 Soviet soldiers from a burial site in the centre of Vievis, the LRT reported, citing a statement from the Elektrėnai municipality.

“This week, archaeological research at the Vievis Soviet soldiers’ cemetery was successfully completed. During the research, archaeologists found the remains of 81 victims of the Second World War,” Elektrėnai Mayor Gediminas Ratkevičius said in the statement issued on Wednesday.

The remains are being prepared for more detailed anthropological examinations by specialists from the Department of Anatomy, Histology and Anthropology at Vilnius University’s Faculty of Medicine. They will then be reburied in Vievis’s Orthodox cemetery.

The Soviet soldiers had been buried in the centre of Vievis, next to St Anne’s Church. A monument to Soviet soldiers once stood at the location, where an eternal flame also burned.

In December 2024, Arūnas Bubnys, director of the Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania, said the burial site should be removed in accordance with the requirements of the 1949 Geneva Convention’s Additional Protocol on the protection of victims of international armed conflicts.

At the request of the Elektrėnai mayor, the Desovietization Commission assessed the burial site and found that it violated a legal ban on the public promotion of totalitarian and authoritarian regimes and their ideologies.

The commission said the site helped establish and spread the myth of the “Great Patriotic War” promoted by the Soviet Union and Russia. It also said the burials were secondary, because the remains had been moved there from original burial sites in the surrounding area.

The remains of Soviet soldiers were also exhumed from the centre of Šiauliai this year. Russia’s Foreign Ministry protested both cases, accusing Lithuania of desecrating the remains.

Vilnius has called Moscow’s accusations false and absurd. Lithuania’s Foreign Ministry said Russia was deliberately distorting the situation to justify legal action it had initiated against Lithuania.

A ban on promoting totalitarian and authoritarian regimes and their ideologies took effect in Lithuania in May 2023. Under the law, monuments, street and square names, and other symbols associated with totalitarianism and authoritarianism must be removed from public spaces.