Mikhail Benyash, a renowned Russian lawyer and activist residing in Lithuania under a humanitarian visa, was nearly expelled from the country because he travelled to Minsk to see his son. He successfully challenged the decision in courts – but warns that bending law to political passions risks pushing Lithuania down the path of his home country.
Lithuania’s Supreme Administrative Court sided with Benyash and ordered the Migration Department to reinstate his residence permit.
The Migration Department had deemed his two trips to Minsk a violation of the new law that restricts travel by Russian residents of Lithuania to Russia and Belarus, and revoked the residence permit.
“I welcome the court’s decision. It shows that the judicial system in Lithuania is healthier than in Russia, more independent,” the lawyer said in an interview with LRT.lt.
The law came into effect last May and bars Russian residence permit holders from going to either Russia or Belarus more than once every three months. Lithuania’s security authorities argued it was necessary to limit the risk of them being recruited by hostile agencies.
The restriction is part of an expanding set of measures adopted in the wake of Russia’s attack on Ukraine in early 2022. Though temporary, the law gets extended every year and targets the citizens of Russia and, to a lesser extent, Belarus.
Under it, Russians cannot apply for visas or residence permits (unless they already have one), they are subject to additional security checks on the border and have to fill out a questionnaire about their personal opinions on the war in Ukraine. Non-resident Russians are not allowed to purchase real estate in Lithuania.
In an interview with LRT, Benyash argues that these rules put Russians in Lithuania under senseless pressure and fear, fomenting toxic environment that contributes very little to actual security.
He lost his residence permit last September because he went to Minsk two times, three weeks apart, in order to meet his seven-year-old child at the airport and then send him back to his mother in Russia.
When the Migration Department quoted these trips as grounds for designating Benyash a security risk, he went to court. The first instance court dismissed his complaint, but the Supreme Administrative Court sided with him and recognised that meeting and seeing off his son was an “objective reason” for an exception.
Benyash is a lawyer from Krasnodar who defended activists and protesters in Russian courts.
Russian lawyer fights Lithuanian migration authorities: ‘Russians live in fear’
