By Natalija Zverko, LRT.lt, Alisa Guseva, LRT.lt.

A Belarusian woman who moved to Lithuania with her family at the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has been denied an extension of her residence permit after the authorities ruled she posed a threat to national security.

Liudmila – her name is changed at the interviewee’s request – received an official notice from the Migration Department stating that her frequent trips to Belarus and her former employment with the state-owned airline Belavia were grounds for concern.

Migration Department’s director, Evelina Gudzinskaitė, stressed that the state’s priority is national security, particularly during the war in Ukraine.

A family settled in Lithuania

Former flight attendant Liudmila left Belarus for Lithuania with her family in 2022. The move was prompted not only by a wish to be with her husband, who was working in Vilnius, but also by the outbreak of war in Ukraine. She says she could not return home because of the moral shock and a sense of complicity in the aggression.

“My husband is half-Ukrainian, and his godmother lives in Kyiv. When the war began, relatives from Ukraine started c calling us straight away. They said military equipment was coming from Belarusian territory, that they were under fire. We were devastated. It was very hard to accept that we were part of a terrible crime. It was a real blessing that we found ourselves in Lithuania,” Liudmila told LRT.lt, with tears in her eyes.

Read more: LRT.LT