Kirkorov goes to court: he asks for the ban on entering Lithuania to be lifted

On 15 February, the Vilnius County Administrative Court received a request from Kirkorov’s lawyer, a Russian and Bulgarian citizen, to overturn this decision of the Migration Department, Audris Kutrevičs, a court representative, assures the Lithuanian media. The court is currently deciding whether Kirkorov’s claim will be upheld.

Russian singer’s lawyer Lins Makaveckis told BNS on Wednesday that he has not yet been able to obtain the Migration Department’s own decision to include the singer in the blacklist of foreigners who have been denied entry to Lithuania. Therefore, this claim is currently unfounded.

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Makavecks and his client are currently only aware of the ban on entering Lithuania from information available in the public space, so Makavecks, as a lawyer, wrote to the Migration Department on 5 February. Time is running out, but there are still no answers. There are no arguments and motivations, so the complaint is still unfounded, Kirkorov’s lawyer told the Lithuanian media.

It has already been reported that on January 19, at the request of the Ministry of the Interior, the Russian pop singer Filip Kirkorov was added to the list of undesirable persons for Lithuania by the Lithuanian Migration Department. The ban on Kirkorov’s visit to Lithuania has been in force for five years.

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“Singers who openly express support for the occupation of Crimea should not be respected in any democracy. We have a clear position on the issue of such workers, so there was no doubt that Philip Kirkorov was blacklisted in Lithuania,” said Interior Minister Agne Bilotaite at the time.

According to Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabriel Landsberg, the well-known singer has repeatedly visited the illegally annexed Crimean peninsula, “deliberately denying Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty and thus indirectly justifying the aggressive actions of the Russian Federation.” According to Landsberg, Kirkorov’s concert in Crimea “is essentially detrimental to Lithuania’s national security”.

Jauns.lv was convinced on the Internet that a few months ago Kirkorov, giving an interview to a Kremlin-controlled television channel in the occupied territory of Ukraine, said that Crimea was “Russia’s favorite place” for him.

Kirkorov “earned” the ban on entering Lithuania after the public in our southern neighbor began discussing the desirability of local concert agencies organizing tours of artists supporting Russia’s aggressive policies.