Context: Lithuania and Poland were the first EU member states to sign the SAFE agreement, with Poland signing on May 8, 2026 and Lithuania following on May 9. This agreement allows countries to receive large loans for military defense. Lithuania will receive more than €6 billion and have 45 years to repay it. SAFE is a new €150 billion EU financial instrument designed to help European countries rapidly modernize their militaries.
Ksenia Lebedzeva, an anchor on the First Information TV Channel*, devoted an entire episode of her program, Eto drugoye, to Lithuania. During a broadcast on May 12, 2026, she said that investment in the country was declining and its industry was dying.
“Any country’s economy is, first and foremost, its industry. And Lithuania is doing poorly in this regard. In 2025, only 13 relatively large projects entered the country, compared to 22 a year earlier. The amount of investment was €15 million instead of the previous nearly €240 million,” said Lebedzeva.
The figures refer to investment projects attracted by the agency Invest in Lithuania. Lithuanian media wrote about it. However, Lebedzeva presented six-month-period data as if it were a full year’s worth of figures. For 2025 as a whole, Lithuania attracted 31 investment projects worth €196 million, not 13 projects worth €15 million.
Lebedzeva claims that 2025 was worse than the previous year in terms of investment.. Technically, that is true. However, 2024 was a record year for Lithuania. The country attracted 47 projects, totaling €348 million. One of the reasons was the launch of the construction of an ammunition production plant by the German defense giant Rheinmetall. This project accounted for half of all investments that year. In 2025, Invest in Lithuania returned to its normal annual volume. At the same time, the agency’s projects represent pledged investments that will be gradually invested in the country over time.
Examining actual investments shows that the data do not support the thesis of a decline in investor interest. Last year, Lithuania received €3 billion in investments, the same amount as the previous year.
In comparison, Belarus reports that foreign invested $7.6 billion in the country last year. However, this figure also includes inflows that are not classified as investments under the international methodology and are not counted as such. Therefore, it cannot be directly compared to the Lithuanian figure. The closest comparable indicator is net foreign direct investment. In Belarus, it is less than $2 billion — about half of what it is in Lithuania.
In terms of accumulated foreign investment, Belarus lags behind even small Latvia: Belarus €16.7 billion, Latvia €27.3 billion, and Lithuania €35 billion. Additionally, the industry in Belarus declined by almost 2% last year, while it grew by more than 3% in Lithuania over the same period.
Thus, Ksenia Lebedzeva of the First Information TV Channel understated Lithuania’s investment indicators by presenting six-month data as if it were annual data. The claim of a “dying industry” is also not supported by the data: Lithuania’s industrial sector is growing, and investment levels are not declining.
* The First Information TV Channel is another name for News.by, a media outlet owned by Belteleradiocompany.
