The so-called Moscow House will be demolished in Vilnius, and after the court’s decision to cancel the building permit, it has not been built completely yet, the mayor of the Lithuanian capital, Remijijs Šimašus, has announced.
“The Moscow house will be dismantled. (..) If someone asks why a nearly completed building is being demolished and whether it is impossible to adapt it to other needs, it must be said that the house was built higher than allowed, it is architecturally foreign, unfinished and irrational. , “he wrote on the social network Facebook.
According to Shimash, the municipality plans to evaluate how best to use the site and submit its findings to the National Land Service.
“But one thing is clear – there will be no propaganda machine in front of Gediminas Castle. The plot will return to Lithuania, the bricks will be able to travel to Moscow,” he said, adding that “Russians who want democracy are welcome in Lithuania and Vilnius.” .
The idea to establish a Moscow cultural and business center in Vilnius arose in 2004 when the then mayor of the Russian capital, Yuri Luzhkov, visited Lithuania. The earliest mayor of Vilnius, Arthur Zuos, strongly supported this idea.
A building permit for the construction of a house in Vilnius was issued in 2008, work began in 2010 and the building was almost completed in 2016, but the court revoked the building permit at the request of the building inspectorate, stating that the building was too high and too dense. execution, giving the foundation “Moscow Culture and Business Center – Moscow House” the opportunity to obtain a new building permit.
In 2018, the foundation submitted new proposals to the municipality for approval, in which the building was no longer seven, but six floors, as allowed by the detailed plan. The application stated that the future building would be a cultural and business co-operation center with the aim of creating and developing good neighborly relations between Moscow and Vilnius, and that it would provide concert and conference halls and office space on the upper floors.
Last autumn, the Supreme Administrative Court of Lithuania put an end to a dispute between the municipality and the foundation, rejecting its complaint about the non-issuance of a building permit.
According to the current mayor, he inherited the almost completed building when he took office in 2015.
“Both architecturally and geopolitically, this building would be a foreign body in the heart of Vilnius, and it turned out that it was built in violation of a building permit,” Šimasashus wrote. “Now it is only a matter of time before the National Land Service formally cancels the use agreement (..) and the State Spatial Planning and Construction Inspectorate will begin the demolition process.”
In 2017, a report by the Lithuanian Department of Homeland Security (SSD) on threats to national security acknowledged that the Moscow House project in Vilnius was quite important to Russia from a symbolic and practical point of view as a potential tool for influence and public diplomacy.
In 2018, Shimash declared that the object was “a tool of the Kremlin’s propaganda and a threat to Lithuania’s national security.”
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