Lithuania’s State Security Department designated 22 Belarusians a threat to national security. They were stripped of their residence permits and banned from entering the Schengen area for 5 years.
They worked at an IT company, two employees of which a Lithuanian court convicted of fraudulently obtaining European Union funds. The prosecution also established that they had concealed ties to the Russian and Belarusian military-industrial complex.
Our lawyer in Lithuania has handled many cases involving the expulsion of Belarusian citizens from Lithuania. And they are often stripped of their temporary or permanent residence permits after being declared a threat to national security on purely formal grounds.
According to the Lithuanian Migration Department’s own statistics, in 2025, 1,634 Belarusians were declared a threat to national security and stripped of their residence permits. As a result, they left the country — not alone, but with their families. By that same 2025 data, the number of Belarusian citizens living in Lithuania fell by 7,225 people.
In light of this data, our lawyer cautions against drawing unequivocal conclusions about how justified the decision to expel these 22 people actually is. “Aliens’” lawyer in Lithuania:
I can say that there’s a lot here that isn’t clear-cut. Lithuania’s State Security Department (VSD) is asking us to take their word for it. But the history of intelligence services worldwide tells us that you shouldn’t just take their word for it.
And in this particular case there’s a worrying detail that raises real doubts.
As reported by LRT, two Belarusian citizens from this IT company were found guilty of fraud amounting to around 500,000 euros.
Yes, fraud is very bad, but it still isn’t a threat to national security. And convicting two people isn’t grounds for expelling another twenty.
From other cases I’ve worked on, I know how VSD constructs causal links and what conclusions it draws from them. So I have solid grounds to suspect that the alleged connection to the Belarusian and Russian military-industrial complex, attributed to the remaining twenty-odd people, might turn out to be a stretch.
If there really were a genuine connection, they’d have been jailed, not just deported. Most likely, they were blamed simply for having worked, at some point, at Belarusian state enterprises. But Belarus’s economy is largely state-run — and practically every citizen of that country has an episode like that in their biography.
So as a lawyer who’s fairly deeply immersed in national-security disputes, my impression is that this expulsion is a form of collective responsibility, where an entire group answers for the sins of two people who actually did something wrong.
If I saw the documents, my opinion might change. But I’ve worked on cases where Belarusian citizens were declared a threat to national security solely because, many years ago (from 8 to 20 years back), they worked as a welder, a lathe operator, a secretary, or a cashier at Belarusian state enterprises. Given that context, it’s quite hard to trust VSD without documents. As for the expelled Belarusian citizens themselves, I’d suggest they not stay silent. Silence is a sign of agreement. And if you disagree, publish the documents stating exactly what you were declared a threat to national security for. Then the people of Lithuania can make up their own minds about how much of a threat you really are — without middlemen in the form of officials.
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