Lithuania to review all Russian-language school textbooks

Lithuania’s education ministry has said that it will “revise” all Russian-language textbooks amid Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

A total of 13 school books will be assessed by the country’s National Education Agency (NEA).

Lithuanian publishers have also been instructed by the government to review the learning resources they provide.

The move comes after criticism of one Russian-language textbook that glorified Moscow and portrayed Russia as an attractive democratic state. “В добрый путь” (“Good Riddance”) — which invited Lithuanian school students to visit Crimea — has now been withdrawn from circulation.

“We must take these measures to make sure that what happened with the Russian textbook never happens again,” Lithuania’s education minister, Jurgita Šiugždinienė, said on Thursday.

“We have informed schools and municipalities that this textbook is not suitable for use in the education process and must be removed from the archives of school libraries,” she added in a statement.

Schools will be refunded if they had purchased the book for their academic curriculum, the ministry added.