Lithuania May Investigate Minister Because of His Soviet-Era Playlist

Lithuania’s Deputy Finance Minister Valentinas Gavrilovas, who was recently discovered to have a profile on Russian social media Vkontakte (VK) which included a Soviet-era musical playlist, might be investigated by the country’s secret service for his conduct.

Lithuania was the first state to break away from the USSR in 1990 having been annexed in 1940.

Lithuanian Prime Minister Gintautas Paluckas told reporters on Monday he might contact the country’s State Security Department to evaluate Gavrilovas’ potential threat to national security.

However, Paluckas said he was personally convinced of Gavrilovas’ “loyalty to Lithuania” and would have a conversation with him before contacting the agency, the Lithuanian news outlet Kaunas Daily reported.

“I see that this issue is intertwined with some reasoning, so I do not rule out the possibility of contacting the State Security Department and requesting a conclusion on whether the person poses a threat to national security or not,” Paluckas said.

Pro-USSR playlists

Paluckas’s statement followed a report by LRT Radio that Gavrilovas shared pro-USSR and pro-Russian songs on VK, including those by Oleg Gazmanov, a Russian singer who boasted about the Soviet occupation of the Baltic states.

In response, Gavrilovas told the outlet that he had already deleted his account, that the songs did not reflect his music preference and had no bearing on his loyalty to Lithuania.

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“I logged in in 2025 to delete this account. I hadn’t logged in for a very long time before that. About the songs – not because I like them, but so I could listen to them again

“I was born in Lithuania, grew up in Lithuania, my whole life is associated only with Lithuania, my work is exclusively for Lithuania,” Gavrilovas told LRT Radio.

May 9 commemorations

However, LRT Radio also discovered a post shared by Gavrilovas on Facebook a few years ago “from the May 9 commemoration at the Antakalnis Cemetery in Vilnius, supporting calls to stop the blockade of the Astravyets nuclear power plant [in Belarus] and not increase funding for the military.”

To that, Gavrilovas told LRT Radio that May 9, the WWII Victory Day traditionally commemorated by the Soviets, was an important day for his family, but the last post on the topic was made in 2020 and “many events have occurred in the world that have changed that situation.”

He added that he would commemorate the end of WWII on May 8 instead from now on, along with the rest of Europe, “out of respect for the opinion of all Lithuanian residents.”