Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty opened its new office in the Lithuanian capital on January 10 in what the U.S. Congress-funded broadcaster called its "latest step in a comprehensive strategy to counter pervasive Russian disinformation and reach new audiences with trusted, independent news and information."
The Vilnius facilities are slated to host journalists exiled from neighboring Belarus since Alyaksandr Lukashenka's regime raided and sealed off RFE/RL's Minsk bureau in mid-2021, nearly a year after a flawed presidential election that the beleaguered opposition said was rigged sparked unprecedented street protests.
Lukashenka then designated RFE/RL as an "extremist organization," effectively criminalizing both its reporting and the following of its news coverage.
The broadcaster noted in its statement on the launch of the Vilnius office that two of its journalists, Ihar Losik and Andrey Kuznechyk, "remain unjustly imprisoned by the Lukashenka regime."
Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda, Lithuanian parliamentary speaker Viktorija Cmilyte-Nielsen, exiled Belarusian opposition leader Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya, and the U.S. Ambassador Robert Gilchrist were expected to join RFE/RL President Jamie Fly at an event to mark the opening.
In a statement, Fly thanked Nauseda and Lithuania's government for their "steadfast support of RFE/RL’s mission."
"Our new Vilnius office is a testament to RFE/RL's decades-long partnership with the Lithuanian people," Fly said. "It will allow us to provide our audiences in Belarus with accurate and truthful news. I am immensely proud of our journalists who have sacrificed so much to carry out this mission and who have now found a safe haven in Lithuania.”
The Vilnius office will also house staff of Current Time, a 24-hour Russian-language video platform to counter "Kremlin and other state propaganda," the company said.