A growing number of people are in pre-trial detention in Lithuania: "the Baltic state is continuing to investigate an alleged Russian espionage partnership, which is very active in the country".
On Tuesday, government prosecutors called for an eight-year prison sentence for Roman Sheshel, accused of giving inside information to Moscow about Lithuania's naval forces. Sheshel, a Russian-born Lithuanian citizen, also reportedly provided his Russian officers with classified information regarding warships belonging to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, of which Lithuania is a member. He is accused of working for the Russians from early 2015 until his capture by the Lithuanian authorities in December 2017. The trial took place behind closed doors to protect state secrets.
Government prosecutors say Sheshel was part of a sizable spy network of Lithuanians recruited from Russia over the past five years and whose "activities threatened Lithuanian national security." Among them is allegedly Alģirds Paleckis, a former parliamentarian and diplomat. Paleckis was born in 1971 in Switzerland, where his father, Justas Vincas, served as a Soviet diplomat. His grandfather, Justas Paleckis, was an imposing figure in the Lithuanian Communist Party, which in 1940 led the merger of Lithuania into the Soviet Union. But his son, Paleckis' father, broke ranks with the family's Communist past and became a prominent nationalist MP in 1990, when the country split from the USSR. Paleckis followed in his father's footsteps and joined the diplomatic service before entering parliament. But in 2008, after a successful career as a pro-Western reformist politician, Paleckis began to veer to the left, eventually founding the Lithuanian Socialist People's Front, a small leftist party that is often accused of being too close to Moscow. The party is an opponent of Lithuania's accession to the European Union and NATO. Critics of Paleckis have pointed out that he is married to a Russian woman whose father is known as a Russian intelligence officer.
German news agency Deutsche Welle reported last week that Paleckis attracted the attention of Lithuanian counter-intelligence investigators after he "fully repaid the mortgage on a home too quickly." He is now accused of providing information to his Russian operatives on a Lithuanian government investigation into Soviet-era informant networks in the small Baltic country. He has been in jail since last October, along with an undeclared number of other alleged members of an alleged Russian spy ring.