Lithuania’s spy agency identifies some 1,400 foreigners as posing threat to national security

The State Security Department (VSD) says 1,415 foreign nationals were found as posing a threat to Lithuania’s national security last year, after screening more than 120 thousand foreigners living in the country or visiting.

“We checked around 122,000 citizens of Russia, Belarus and other countries last year. We screened them through the lens of counterintelligence and vulnerability. Of these, some 1,415 were named to the Migration Department as a threat,” said Darius Jauniškis, head of the VSD, as he presented the latest threat assessment at the Seimas.

Arrivals of Belarusian nationals to live or work in Lithuania are deemed most suspicious if these persons are found to have worked or served in Belarusian state institutions or other sectors of importance to the regime, he added.

Regular travellers between Lithuania and Belarus often come under scrutiny of the services, Jauniškis noted.

The head of the Defence Intelligence and Security Service (AOTD), Elegijus Paulavičius, said the round-the-clock movement of people between Lithuania and Belarus is a major challenge to counterintelligence efforts.

Lithuanians travelling to Belarus can become a target of the Belarusian services as well, he said.

“If people are constantly moving from Lithuania to Belarus, it is very easy for the Belarusian services to assign them [certain – ELTA] tasks,” said the head of AOTD.

He emphasised that people travelling between the countries could be useful to Belarusian agencies to get hold of non-classified data about Lithuanian military units, their deployment and the country’s critical and strategic infrastructure.