Lithuania’s foreign minister says glorification dishonors victims and falsifies history. At home, the LAF founder and the Šiauliai County chief who signed the Žagarė ghetto order have received certificates, procedural escape routes and heroic substitution.

On September 8, 2026, Lithuania’s foreign minister, Kęstutis Budrys, condemned the glorification of Ratko Mladić. Lithuania’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs reposted him. Budrys wrote: “Ratko Mladić was a convicted war criminal. His legacy is one of the Srebrenica massacre, genocide and crimes against humanity. Any attempt to glorify him dishonors the victims, disrespects the survivors, and falsifies [sic] the truth. History cannot be rewritten, and justice cannot be erased.” Lithuania stated the rule abroad while its own state memory system continued to publish exculpatory material about Kazys Škirpa, founder of the Lithuanian Activist Front, and Jonas Noreika, the Šiauliai County chief who signed the Žagarė ghetto order.

Mladić died on August 27, 2026 while serving a life sentence after convictions for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. At his September 7 funeral, Serbian army soldiers carried his flag-draped coffin and several serving ministers attended; the Serbian government had already sent a plane to return his remains from The Hague. Associated Press described the burial as a hero’s funeral with military honors. The European Union said glorification of convicted war criminals and genocide revisionism have no place in the EU or candidate countries. Budrys applied that rule to Serbia. Lithuania had already written almost the same rule for itself.

On March 19, 2016, the Holocaust sub-commission of Lithuania’s presidentially established International Commission condemned public commemoration where reliable evidence shows that a person participated “in any way” in the persecution or murder of Jews, regardless of later conduct. In 2023, Lithuania enacted the Law on the Prohibition of the Propagation of Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes and Their Ideologies, covering the Nazi as well as Soviet occupations. Under the statute, the Seimas forms the expert commission on the Genocide Centre’s nomination; the Centre provides its technical servicing; and after the commission reports, the Centre’s Director General issues the binding removal or retention decision.

Based on the record I have documented over decades, I do not regard the Lithuanian Genocide and Resistance Research Centre (LGGRTC) as a presumptively reliable historical authority. In my assessment, its publications have repeatedly functioned as instruments of national historical advocacy and, in material instances, as vehicles for distorted or fictionalized history. Accordingly, I assign no independent evidentiary weight to a historical claim merely because it has been published by the Lithuanian Genocide and Resistance Research Centre. Any material proposition........

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