"Two Molotov cocktails were cast into the territory yesterday evening. They caught on fire, our police officers put them out. It was a coincidence that we avoided damage, the consequences could have been much worse," the ambassador told BNS.
The ambassador said the incident occurred at 10:45 PM local time when he was inside the building. The Molotov cocktails – bottles containing incendiary liquid – were thrown over the fence surrounding the embassy.
"We could not have had any presumptions about this happening. We will cooperate in the investigation," said Linkevičius.
Lithuania's Foreign Ministry has already drafted a note to Belarus over the attack against the country's embassy in Minsk and will hand it to the Belarusian ambassador later on Wednesday, the ministry has said on Wednesday.
"The head of the Belarusian diplomatic mission will be summoned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he will be asked to ascertain that Belarus, as the hosting country, ensures implementation of the provisions of the Vienna Convention in connection to safety of diplomatic missions, and relevant Belarusian institutions take the necessary action without delay to identify those behind the attack and bring them to justice," reads a press release circulated by the Foreign Ministry.
The communiqué also stated the ministry was ready to cooperate with the Belarusian law-enforcement to solve the crime as soon as possible.
Relevant Lithuanian institutions have been notified of the incident to take action within their field of competences to step up safety of the diplomatic mission.
Speaking at the meeting of the parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee earlier on Wednesday, Edminas Bagdonas, director of the ministry's Eastern Neighborhood Policy Department, said that the note drew attention to the fact that similar attacks against the Lithuanian Embassy in Belarus were not isolated cases. Paint has been thrown into the embassy facilities in the past, an imitation explosive has been discovered in the territory.
Bagdonas, Lithuania's former ambassador to Belarus, said Belarusian authorities had failed to identify any suspects. When it comes to the last instance of paint throwing, one of the versions investigated by Belarusian prosecutors was complicity of Russian radicals.
He said that this time the personnel of the embassy also turned to the Belarusian Prosecutor General's Office.
According to information available to him, the Molotov cocktails landed next to the part of the building which accommodates police officers guarding the facilities.
Bagdonas said the ambassador's residence was in the same building.
"Luckily, nobody was harmed. (…) Had the cocktail hit an open window, it would have caught on fire. Throwing a rock is one thing, but a Molotov cocktail is entirely different. This could be qualified as terrorism," the diplomat said.
The European Union (EU) has introduced sanctions against Belarus over the brutal treatment of the opposition and human rights defenders by the authoritarian regime of President Alexander Lukashenko.
Ideological attacks
The attack against the Lithuanian Embassy in Minsk is ideologically motivated and Lithuania demands it to be investigated within a few days, MP Emanuelis Zingeris, chairman of the parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee, has commented on Wednesday.
“It is a task for the Belarusian administration to investigate the incident without delay, and the Republic of Lithuania demands that it should be solved within the next few days, as it jeopardizes lives of citizens of the Republic of Lithuania – people who work at the embassy and diplomats. The hostile act against a country of the European Union – the Republic of Lithuania – has ideological motives, as it is clearly linked with the date, which part of the extremist community celebrates – the anniversary of the bolshevik upheaval in Russia, which was performed against then Constitutional system of Russia, the democratic Republic of Russia,” Zingeris told journalists at the Seimas on Wednesday.
Wednesday is a day-off in Belarus to mark the 1917 revolution, festivities are organized in Minsk for the occasion.
In Zingeris' words, the meeting of the parliamentary committee on Wednesday will discuss protection of Lithuanian embassies.
"We will approve a resolution on protection of Lithuanian embassies to Belarus. However, given the character of the administration and the pace of the investigation of Minsk metro bombings, we demand that the incident relating to the Republic of Lithuania be investigated with the same speed, as it is an attack against the Republic of Lithuania and its territory in Minsk,” said the head of the parliamentary committee.
