Online advertisements urging Lithuanians to apply for a Russian passport could be a covert recruitment campaign for Moscow’s spy agencies, officials have warned.
Ads have appeared on Facebook recently offering Russian nationality without the need to renounce Lithuanian citizenship, according to public broadcaster LRT.
Dual citizenship is generally not allowed in Lithuania, except in rare circumstances.
The head of the country’s Crisis Management Center said that Russian operatives could be using ads on social media to find individuals in the Baltic nation who harbor pro-Moscow views.
“Russia is seeking to identify certain individuals who may be sympathetic to or have some sentiments towards that country to possibly exploit them in the future,” Vilmantas Vitkauskas told LRT.
The center said that the ads were managed by a Russian private company that runs a “repatriation program” approved by the authorities in Moscow. Officials in Vilnius encouraged Lithuanians not to engage or respond to the ads and to report any suspicious activity.
Others, however, suggested that those behind the passport advertisements were more likely to be interested in making money than recruiting spies.
“These are paid services. The big question is to what extent they are legitimate and to what extent a person can fall into a purely economic trap of deception,” Nerijus Maliukevičius, a lecturer at Vilnius University, told the public broadcaster.
Lithuania’s foreign ministry said it was illegal for citizens to hold more than one passport without getting a formal exemption. It added that taking Russian citizenship could lead to “the possibility of being drafted to participate in Russian aggression in Ukraine.”
In the 2021 Lithuanian census, 5% of the population said they had Russian ethnic identity, while over 60% of the country’s 2.9 million residents said they could speak the Russian language.
Lithuania has held two referendums in recent years on proposals to amend the constitution to allow more people to have dual citizenship. Although those who voted in 2019 and 2024 backed the proposed changes, both initiatives failed because of low turnout.
