VILNIUS, May 16. /TASS/. Vilnius expressed protest to the Russian Federation over the dismantling of the memorial to Lithuanian and Polish political prisoners in Irkutsk, the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry announced Tuesday.

"Russian charge d’affaires Alexander Yolkin was summoned to the Ministry and presented with a note of protest," the Ministry said.

According to the Ministry, the dismantling of the monument - the memorial and the cross - should be viewed as deliberate action on "denigration of the memory of victims of the totalitarian Soviet regime and rewriting of history."

In 2022 and 2022, almost all memorials to Soviet World War II soldiers were dismantled in Lithuania. Major memorials were destroyed in Vilnius, Kaunas and Klaipeda.