Ингуши
By 1944, Nazi Germany was retreating along the Eastern Front and Soviet forces reached the territory of Lithuania by mid-1944. In October 1944, Soviet officials, including Sergei Kruglov who had experience deporting the Chechen and Ingush people, began circulating ideas about deporting families of "bandits" – men who avoided conscription into the Red Army and joined the Lithuanian partisans. However, such measures were not practical at the time of war. Instead, preparations were made to deport any Lithuanian Germans, their families, and more distant relatives. The train with 1,000 people left Kaunas on May 3 and arrived at its destination only in June. The deportees provided free labor to cotton plantations in the valley of the Vakhsh River. Due to particularly poor living conditions, about 580 deportees died in the first two years.