Fact-checking Rimas Bružas’ column on LRT: 2% real vs 50% claimed

Is Rimas Bružas getting a little too worked up?

Fact jour­nal­ism and com­men­tary jour­nal­ism share a com­mon trait – they are both based on facts. Should be. If an author cites an opin­ion, no mat­ter how con­tro­ver­sial it may be to some­one, they are enti­tled to do so. But facts need to be checked, oth­er­wise the argu­ments sound friv­o­lous.

Regard­ing the sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of Belaru­sians in Vil­nius, Rimas Bružas notes that while stuck in traf­fic, ‘one might feel as though they were in Min­sk due to the near­ly equal num­ber of cars with Belaru­sian and Lithuan­ian license plates’.

For those per­ma­nent­ly resid­ing in Lithua­nia, it sound­ed dubi­ous, to say the least. Cars with Belaru­sian license plates are now quite rare on the streets of Vil­nius and Kau­nas. In the last year or two, there have been sig­nif­i­cant­ly few­er of them, espe­cial­ly after many relo­cants reg­is­tered their cars with local author­i­ties as required by law.

The arti­cle implies that the author is advo­cat­ing for action, which is what upset the Belaru­sians. He rhetor­i­cal­ly asks if read­ers have wit­nessed Lithua­ni­ans orga­niz­ing ‘anti-Belaru­sian flash mobs’ near the Akropo­lis shop­ping cen­ter, or if they have seen posters por­tray­ing Lukashen­ka and Putin in ‘obscene pos­es,’ or if they have come across leaflets placed behind their wind­shield wipers.

The BAJ author con­duct­ed a fact check after the colum­nist men­tioned a shop­ping cen­ter pop­u­lar among Belaru­sians. The goal was to ver­i­fy if there were indeed as many cars from Belarus as stat­ed in the arti­cle.

After care­ful­ly study­ing the text, it is clear that the num­ber of our com­pa­tri­ots in Lithua­nia is con­cern­ing to the jour­nal­ist. It is worth inves­ti­gat­ing whether Rimas Bružas is exag­ger­at­ing. Espe­cial­ly since it is very easy to ver­i­fy this fact.

What about the share of Belarus cars?

The study was con­duct­ed on Sun­day from 12:00 to 1:00 pm to observe the peak num­ber of Belaru­sians near Akropo­lis. The park­ing lot in front of the shop­ping cen­ter was almost full, with the major­i­ty of cars hav­ing Lithuan­ian license plates.

Do you need evi­dence? Here it is: The author of BAJ count­ed the num­ber of cars with non-Lithuan­ian license plates and took rel­e­vant pho­tos in the park­ing lot with a capac­i­ty of over 1300 vehi­cles.

The results showed that 24 cars with Belaru­sian license plates were parked in front of the shop­ping cen­ter. Includ­ing a BMW with diplo­mat­ic license plates, i.e. its own­er can be con­sid­ered a Belaru­sian only very loose­ly, but we have includ­ed this car in the Belaru­sian sta­tis­tics.

Do some sim­ple math. You’ll get the fol­low­ing. Let’s assume the park­ing lot is 90% full – that’s 1,170 cars. What is the share of Belaru­sian cars? Recall, that there are 24 of them. Two per­cent! This is a far cry from the 50% that Rimas Bružas writes about.

The fact that Belaru­sians are more com­mon among for­eign­ers in Vil­nius is what the author of the arti­cle on the LRT web­site is right about. At that time, the park­ing lot had 7 cars with Ukrain­ian license plates, 3 with Lat­vian license plates, 3 with Pol­ish license plates, 2 with Eston­ian license plates, 1 with Finnish license plates, and 1 with Ger­man license plates. The vehi­cles changed fre­quent­ly, but their pro­por­tions remained con­sis­tent. Enough to get an idea.

It is dif­fi­cult to imag­ine that such a num­ber of Belaru­sians who trav­eled to Vil­nius could pose a threat to any­one! In my opin­ion, the expres­sion used (‘there are almost as many cars with Belaru­sian license plates as with Lithuan­ian ones’) is unsuc­cess­ful and spec­u­la­tive, even if it is intend­ed as an artis­tic device.

So how many Belarusians are there in Lithuania?

Oth­er facts tes­ti­fy that there are not so many ‘vis­i­tants from Belarus.’ In par­tic­u­lar, sta­tis­tics on Schen­gen and nation­al visas issued by the coun­tries of the rel­e­vant agree­ment. Belaru­sians used to be record-break­ers in obtain­ing Schen­gen visas, but in recent years they have become almost out­siders. It is increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to obtain a per­mit for cit­i­zens of the Repub­lic of Belarus to vis­it the Euro­pean Union.

While it has always been quite a quest, now it’s an expen­sive pro­ce­dure with a sig­nif­i­cant risk of fail­ure. Accord­ing to Ali­ak­san­dr Liber, a visa ana­lyst who spoke with Zerka­lo, the cost of an EU visa for Belaru­sians ranges from Br390 to Br2,000 (€110 to €570), and the deci­sion can take up to a year. So the entrance tick­et is too expen­sive, and to get to Vil­nius, a Belaru­sian must have great moti­va­tion.

Belaru­sians now find it eas­i­er to trav­el to Rus­sia, but many still choose Lithua­nia because they feel more aligned with Euro­pean val­ues. This is not just about shop­ping and restau­rants.

Addi­tion­al­ly, fol­low­ing the pub­li­ca­tion on LRT, there were dis­cus­sions among jour­nal­ists that the offi­cial data regard­ing the num­ber of Belaru­sians in Lithua­nia may have been exag­ger­at­ed. Under the new require­ments, truck dri­vers are now required to obtain res­i­dence per­mits instead of visas. This means that they are con­sid­ered res­i­dents, even though most of them live in their truck cabs or Belarus. Accord­ing to the Lithuan­ian Freight For­warders Union, there are approx­i­mate­ly 40,000 work­ers in this cat­e­go­ry.

If this is true, then the Belaru­sian dias­po­ra in Lithua­nia may not be as large as offi­cial­ly claimed. Accord­ing to the lat­est pub­lished data, approx­i­mate­ly 60,000 Belaru­sians reside in Lithua­nia. How­ev­er, if we exclude pro­fes­sion­al dri­vers, the num­ber may be clos­er to 20,000.

No need to look for enemies among friends!

But back to Akropo­lis. The exam­ple of Fred­erikas Jan­sonas demon­strates how the posi­tion of the same per­son can vary depend­ing on the sit­u­a­tion. As not­ed by Pozirk, in a 2024 inter­view with Žinių Radi­jas, the advi­sor to the Lithuan­ian pres­i­dent stat­ed that Belaru­sians could poten­tial­ly become the fifth col­umn. He believes that the par­lia­ment made a mis­take by refus­ing to lev­el the play­ing field for Belaru­sians and Rus­sians.

«The Depart­ment of State Secu­ri­ty sig­nals that the prob­lem is that thou­sands and thou­sands of Belaru­sians come to Lithua­nia every month. And we’ve cre­at­ed a poten­tial­ly big prob­lem,» the offi­cial empha­sized.

In the past, Fred­erikas Jan­sonas served as Akropo­lis’ media rela­tions rep­re­sen­ta­tive and made con­flict­ing state­ments. For exam­ple, in an inter­view with the Belaru­sian state TV chan­nel ONT in 2015, he spoke in Russ­ian:

“They come because there is a wide vari­ety of goods, qual­i­ty mer­chan­dise, and an oppor­tu­ni­ty to save mon­ey. Where­as 5–7 years ago they went shop­ping, now they come for leisure. They ice skate, they bowl.”

Indi­vid­ual Lithuan­ian offi­cials are not the only ones who have changed their rhetoric. After 2020, many peo­ple approved the posi­tion of Belaru­sians, but with the out­break of war in Ukraine the atti­tude changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly. Many peo­ple now claim that we are rep­re­sen­ta­tives of an aggres­sor coun­try.

How­ev­er, most of the Belaru­sian dias­po­ra in Lithua­nia are against Lukashenka’s regime and strong­ly oppose Rus­si­a’s actions. This was evi­dent from the large num­ber of white-red-white flags at the march in sup­port of Ukraine in Vil­nius on Feb­ru­ary 24, 2022.

In short, anti-Belaru­sian attacks tar­get demo­c­ra­t­ic move­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives. Lukashen­ka and Putin are effec­tive­ly using it in pro­pa­gan­da to their advan­tage. For instance, the news­pa­per SB. Belarus Segod­nya used arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence to pub­lish a series of mock­ing images. The images alleged­ly fea­tured Gitanas Nausė­da and a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Belaru­sian dias­po­ra. The news­pa­per accom­pa­nied the images with the fol­low­ing com­ment:

« ‘Free­dom fight­ers’ who rushed to Lithua­nia were warned that they would only be need­ed there as long as the idea of a coup d’é­tat in Belarus was still on the agen­da of the West. Not only did they not believe, but they also became so out of line that they began to con­sid­er them­selves as his­tor­i­cal mas­ters of the Lithuan­ian lands.»

Rimas Bružas’ Face­book post attract­ed a typ­i­cal response. The com­men­ta­tors include sup­port­ers of so-called ‘Litsvin­ism’ and ‘Russ­ian world’. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, some com­ments con­tained threats against the author. In short, a rich col­lec­tion of par­rot cries from the Krem­lin bots has been assem­bled.

Such con­ver­sa­tions and mis­un­der­stand­ings can lead to neg­a­tive out­comes. Only author­i­tar­i­an regimes ben­e­fit from wors­en­ing rela­tions and shar­ing a com­mon his­to­ry. To defend free­dom, we must stay unit­ed rather than seek out ene­mies among friends dur­ing this chal­leng­ing time for democ­ra­cies world­wide.

The author’s opin­ion may dif­fer from that of the edi­to­r­i­al board.

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