WARSAW, Dec 23, 2025 (BSS/AFP) - A Lithuanian court jailed three men Tuesday for vandalising a statute of a hero of the resistance against Soviet occupation.

The court in Kaunas accused the men -- two Estonian-Russian nationals and a Russian citizen -- of acting on behalf of Russia for payment, a charge the men denied.

It sentenced them to between two and a half and four years in jail for aiding another state and damaging the statue of leading partisan Adolfas Ramanauskas-Vanagas.

Ramanauskas-Vanagas, who was executed in 1957, was a symbol of the Baltic country's opposition to Soviet occupation after World War II.

Local media said one of the men had admitted the statue in the southern town of Merkine had been daubed with red paint in January 2024.

But, they reported, he said he did not know the identity of the person who had ordered the vandalism or indeed who the resistance hero was, and that he had been motivated solely by money.

Ramanauskas-Vanagas reburied with a state funeral in 2018.