In March 2025, Lithuania’s Migration Department declared a 63-year-old Russian man a threat to national security, refused to renew his permanent residence permit and cancelled the one he held at the time.
The main reason was the man’s past employment in Russia. Back home he had been a senior operator at a military unit, then an aircraft technician at an airport, and finally an engineer at a scientific and technical enterprise.
In the migration authorities’ view, every institution the man had worked for presupposes his loyalty to the Russian government — and therefore his support for its aggressive foreign policy, which poses a threat to Lithuania’s national security.
Yet the man had never concealed any of this from the Lithuanian authorities, and in the past it had been no obstacle to obtaining and renewing his permanent residence. But after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the migration authorities revised their earlier assessments.
Officials dismissed out of hand every fact that spoke in the man’s favour.
His wife and daughter are Lithuanian citizens. His wife, moreover, is the daughter of a repressed “forest brother” — a member of the armed anti-Soviet resistance — and he married her back in Soviet times.
The entire family left Russia immediately after the annexation of Crimea, rejecting the policies of the Russian state.
The man integrated actively into Lithuanian society. As soon as he arrived, he began working at a local aircraft repair company. He bought a flat in his new home and passed the examinations in the Lithuanian language and Constitution.
Because of the Lithuanian authorities’ decision, the man was forced to separate from his family and move to Georgia. He cannot return to Russia, as he openly condemns its aggression against Ukraine and actively helps Ukrainians affected by the war.
Despite these circumstances, every Lithuanian court sided with the migration authorities, on the grounds that “the interests of the state are more important than any inconvenience or negative consequences for the individual.”
The man then decided to take his case to the European Court of Human Rights. The application to the ECtHR was prepared by “EXILES” lawyer Mikhail Benyash. In early September, the Court announced that it would hear it.
This is the third application to the European Court that EXILES‘s lawyers have brought against Lithuania. All of them concern migration matters.
We hope that the ECtHR, whose judgments form part of Lithuania’s legal system, will deliver its authoritative assessment in these cases — and correct the departures from European standards that are appearing ever more often in migration disputes in the Baltic states.
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