Other events in Baltic States

Police have launched a pre-trial investigation to find out who painted Soviet and Nazi symbols on a monument to NKVD agents in a village close to Marijampole, the administrative center of southwestern Lithuania, informs LETA/BNS.

Rimantas Lekeckas, the top official at Sunskai, a small town in the municipality of Marijampole, confirmed to BNS that local people noticed last weekend that four five- pointed stars and a swastika had been painted in red paint on the NKVD monument in the village of Grybine, some 5 kilometers from Marijampole.

Lekeckas doubts if the monument could be vandalized by locals as Lithuania celebrated the centennial of its restored statehood.

The official expects that municipal authorities will give the green light for dismantling the monument, which has been recently removed from the list of protected cultural heritage, shortly.

Grutas Park, a Soviet-era theme park in southern Lithuania, has already offered to take in the monument.

Over 20 agents of Soviet repressive bodies and Soviet activists were ambushed and killed by anti-Soviet resistance fighters in Grybine on Jun. 4, 1946. Historians say that several partisans died during the exchange of fire, too.