On Tuesday, publicist Oleg Šuraevs made public on the Facebook social network the companies that are still buying various goods in Russia this year and transporting them to Lithuania.
Presenting this list, the publicist said that these are companies “that leave money in Russia, fill the Russian military budget and, of course, support the entire infrastructure of Russian businesses and take care of the financial success of Russian companies.” The more they buy, the better off Russian businesses are, they have opportunities to create jobs, etc. – I won’t tell you the basics of the economy.”
The day before, O. Shurayevas also made public the list of companies which, according to his data, in 2024 January 26-31 still exported goods to Russia.
According to him, he got this information after accidentally purchasing an expensive subscription service from the information trade data portal importgenius.com and decided to share the available data with the Lithuanian public.
In the list of companies buying goods from Russia published by O. Šuraev, there are more than half a dozen companies operating in Lithuania.
One of them is the “Homo sapiens” bookstore, which has been operating in Vilnius for fourteen years.
The bookstore’s website states that the company cooperates with 300 publishers and suppliers from Russia, and over 20,000 books can be found in the bookstore itself. books of different titles in Russian and 180 titles of printed publications.
“Extensive business relations with book publishers of the Russian Federation, well-coordinated logistics, weekly deliveries allow us to supply our customers with a wide range of Russian-language books and periodicals at low prices and in the shortest possible time,” the Homo sapiens website states.
The bookstore also sells Russian toys and souvenirs.
15min after contacting the manager of Homo sapiens, Yelena Suchachiova, she confirmed that her bookstore does business with Russia.
“But I don’t have time to answer your questions right now, I’m very busy,” she said.
When asked if she intends to end cooperation with a country that commits war crimes in Ukraine, J. Suchachiova did not answer for personal reasons.
As the company’s financial data reveal, since 2019 sales revenue has doubled – from 2 million up to 4 million Eur in 2023.
Meanwhile, since the start of active Russian hostilities in Ukraine in 2022, this company’s profits have also grown steadily: in 2021 it was 20 thousand. Eur, 2022 – already 47 thousand. EUR, and in 2023 – more than 58 thousand. Eur.
There is propaganda literature
15min visited Homo sapiens and reviewed their range. There is not a lot of highly visible propaganda literature out there.
It mainly sells Russian and translated classics, historical books by foreign authors, children’s books, and esoteric literature.
However, a few names stuck out. Here in the bookstore you can find books by journalist and propagandist Vladimir Pozner, Artyom Drabkin, who denies the annexation of Donbas, and propagandist Igor Prokopenko.
Book cover
Book cover
Not for the first time in Akirati
The activities of this bookstore already in 2015 attracted the attention of the public and politicians.
At that time, it was surprising that in this Vilnius bookstore you could find books in Russian, which said that it was the USA that caused the war in Ukraine, that Crimea had always belonged to Russia, and that the Americans had not landed on the moon.
Among the books that could be purchased at that time were the publications of well-known Kremlin propagandists and tools of Vladimir Putin’s regime, N. Starikov, J. Muchin, and V. Katasonov.
Bookstore manager Jelena Suchačiova 15min then he said that he had neither the desire nor the time to delve into and evaluate the authors’ works, because the bookstore is engaged in business, not in the formation of political views.
“The commercial activity of our company is related to the pursuit of profit, our goal is not political, cultural or religious education of readers. That’s why we don’t have an internal censorship mechanism that selects and rejects or omits specific books”, said J. Suchačiova, director of the bookstore, nine years ago.
S. Kairys: there are mechanisms
Russian television is prohibited in Lithuania, but there are no such restrictions on literature. The Minister of Culture Simonas Kairys commented on the situation, he named the mechanisms that help to deal with this situation.
“The system of how we should act in such situations is defined. The first filter is customs. There have certainly been cases and situations when publications are detained at customs, and then consulted with ŽEIT (Journalists’ Ethics Inspector’s Office). If propaganda books are already on the shelves of bookstores, then you can simply contact ŽEIT, this service, after conducting an investigation, will determine what the publication is promoting”, – 15min commented S. Kairys.
“Besides, such literature is not distributed for free. You can simply not buy it, and then there will be no interest in taking it to Lithuania and selling it. But why such books are on the shelves, one can only guess, said S. Kairys. “Accordingly, I would say, for a small part of the society, it is apparently relevant.”
When asked how S. Kairys assesses the fact that “Homo sapiens” still maintains trade relations with Russia during the war, the minister said: “I assess it as a completely irresponsible attitude, as looking only at profit and quick earnings <...>. In my mind, after several years of war, such things should simply not exist. Of course, sometimes the topics are not equal and of the same weight. Sometimes, when we find a book in a small bookstore, we see it as a significant problem when at the same time there is a larger export of goods to Russia. Other ministries or institutions don’t talk much about it.”
S. Kairys believes that the Ministry of Culture cannot ban such books, because “Vilnius is not Minsk or Moscow”.
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2024-07-27 07:36:54