On Wednesday [June 23, 2021] the old name of Tricolor Alley–Škirpa Alley–was pasted over the street sign there.

A video recording made around noon Wednesday appears to show a man creasing the wrinkles out of a sticker and then seems to give a thumbs-up to friends standing below him.

This has happened before and the city of Vilnius has removed the sticker. They say they will again.

“We’ll do as we’ve done the previous times, we’ll take it off,” advisor to the mayor of Vilnius Karolis Vaitkevičius told 15min.lt. In early January of last year the same thing happened and the municipality said then they had written two complaints to the prosecutor’s office.

The street sign hangs from a corner of the Museum of Applied Art at the intersection of Tricolor Alley and Arsenalo street in central Vilnius. The city of Vilnius resolved to change the name from the controversial [Lithuanian Nazi leader] Kazys Škirpa to Tricolor Alley in late July, 2019, citing Škirpa’s “anti-Semitic statements” as the reason behind the move.

Now a group [of ultra-nationalists] is demanding they be allowed to erect a plaque commemorating Škirpa in a public part of Vilnius. On Wednesday [June 23] as well Vytautas Sinica posted a complaint about the city rejecting a request to put up such a plaque, saying: “On June 22, during a meeting to commemorate the June Uprising, the public was presented a memorial plaque commemorating June Uprising organizer Kazys Škirpa manufactured with funds from the Pro Patria youth group. The plan was to hang it on outer wall of the Museum of Occupations and Freedom Battles where Škirpa worked in 1918. In the end hanging this plaque was not allowed. Contrary to usual procedures, the police warned they would interfere and stop this by force.”

Full story in Lithuanian here.