Context: Franak Viacorka, the chief advisor to Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, stated that her office in 2026 will partly operate from Warsaw. Tsikhanouskaya herself confirmed that Poland offered its help after the Lithuanian authorities stripped her office of its security. Office employees receive threats daily.
Victoria Kirichenko, the presenter of the Vecherni politicheski kanal show, shared her thoughts on Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya’s decision to expand her office to Warsaw and the reasons behind it. She called one of the leaders of the Belarusian opposition a “freeloader” and said that Lithuanian politicians finally “booted her out.” She also named the “true reason for the expulsion”:
“There was hope that her band of habitual criminals would follow her. After all, crime rates in Lithuania increased after 2020. ‘Fugitive’ Belarusians were becoming increasingly common among the perpetrators,” the presenter stated on January 26, 2026.
According to the Lithuanian Interior Ministry, the crime rate in Lithuania reached its lowest level in at least 12 years in 2021, with 42,500 crime reports. There was also a decrease from 51,400 in 2019 to 46,300 in 2020. The crime rate worsened slightly in 2022, but by 2025, it had nearly returned to the 2021 lows.
Indeed, more foreigners have come to the attention of the police: 567 in 2020, 1,239 in 2022, and 1,078 in 2024. However, the overall number of foreigners in Lithuania has increased, too, especially since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine. In 2020, there were 73,800 foreigners, and by 2024, this number had grown to 221,800.
No separate statistics on Belarusians are available. However, general data shows that, before 2020, foreigners were involved in less than 1% of law violations. This did not change after the mass relocation of Belarusians. The increase to 1.5% occurred in 2022, which can be attributed to the outbreak of war in Ukraine. Since 2024, however, the number of lawbreakers among foreigners has decreased noticeably to 0.5%.
