Švenčionienė’s lawyer says her actions showed political sympathy
Monday 12th October 2026 on 13:15 in
Lithuania
Erika Švenčionienė’s actions amounted to political sympathy, not assistance to a foreign state, her lawyer told the Vilnius Regional Court on Monday, LRT reported. Švenčionienė is charged with helping another state act against Lithuania.
Lawyer Svetlana Naidenko argued that her client’s wish to develop ties with a neighbouring state could not be treated as a crime. She also said the investigation was inadequate and that the 15 alleged episodes did not specify what action by a foreign state Švenčionienė had helped carry out.
“There is not a single piece of evidence that information published in Švenčionienė’s posts was untrue,” Naidenko said. She argued that the charges were vague and that prosecutors had not proved criminal intent.
The court began hearing closing arguments from defence lawyers on Monday. Prosecutor Redas Savickas has asked the court to convict Švenčionienė and sentence her to two years in prison. He has recommended a year and a half in prison for co-defendant Kazimieras Juraitis and a €15,000 fine for Valerijus Ivanov.
Švenčionienė and Ivanov are also accused of publicly approving international and Soviet crimes, denying them or grossly trivialising them.
The case was sent to court in December 2023. Prosecutors allege that Švenčionienė and Juraitis acted together in 2022 to help Russian and Belarusian organisations act against Lithuania, including by travelling to Belarus, appearing on Belarusian and Russian media programmes and publicly supporting the policies of the two countries. Prosecutors also say they denied the legitimacy of Lithuania’s parliament and supported a 2022 referendum in Belarus.
The indictment also concerns claims about the safety of the Astravets nuclear power plant, which prosecutors say were intended to influence public opinion. Lithuania’s Criminal Code provides for prison sentences of two to seven years for helping another state or its organisation act against Lithuania’s constitutional order, sovereignty, territorial integrity, defence or economic power.
The defendants were members of the dissolved International Forum of Good Neighbourhood association. Ivanov is a former leader of the prosoviet organisation Jedinstvo.