Lithuania-91: “We are at war with the USSR”
On March 27, 2019, a political trial in Lithuania that had been going on for 13 years, called the “case of January 13, 1991,” ended. Since 2006, the Prosecutor General's Office and the court of the Republic of Lithuania opened a criminal prosecution of 60 former servicemen of the USSR Armed Forces, accused of the death and injury of people injured in clashes between protesters and military personnel brought in to defend Soviet power and the rule of law in the republic. During the riots, 14 people died, including KGB “Alpha” special forces officer Viktor Shatskikh, and more than 600 people were injured.
Last Wednesday, the Vilnius District Court announced a verdict against 67 citizens of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, whom Lithuania accused of “war crimes and crimes against humanity.”
As expected, Lithuania, the most humane and democratic court in the world, did not issue a single acquittal. All defendants were given prison sentences ranging from 4 to 14 years, with the longest sentence – 14 years – being awarded to Belarusian General Vladimir Uskhopchik, the former head of the Vilnius military garrison. Former KGB officer Mikhail Golovatov was sentenced to the second longest term - 12 years in prison. The Lithuanian Themis sentenced the former Minister of Defense of the USSR, 94-year-old Marshal of the Soviet Union Dmitry Timofeevich Yazov, to 10 years in prison, although the prosecutor demanded life imprisonment.
The last Marshal of the Soviet Union D.T. Yazov.
It is noteworthy that Lithuanian democracy turned out to be petty and vindictive, banning Russian diplomats and journalists from attending the trial.
Of the 67 accused, 65 were tried in absentia. Unfortunately, two Russian citizens, former SA officers, Yuri Mel and Gennady Ivanov, ended up in the dock. Ivanov was arrested in Vilnius, where he lived after the collapse of the USSR, and Mel officially came to Lithuania from the Kaliningrad region in 2014, where he fell into the tenacious clutches of vengeful limitrophe guards.
Apparently, Ivanov, who was at large before the trial, will not go to jail, since he was given a minimum sentence of 4 years, he was not taken into custody after the trial, the verdict did not enter into legal force, and the defense announced its intention to appeal the verdict.
Mel, despite the protests of the Russian side, has been in prison for 5 years now, and if nothing changes in his fate, then he has another 2 years left before his release, taking into account the sentence - 7 years in prison.
When the former Soviet military personnel were sentenced, the former chairman of the Supreme Council of the Lithuanian SSR, Vytautas Landsbergis, who is rightfully considered one of the perpetrators of the tragedy that took place near the walls of the Vilnius television center 28 years ago, was present in the courtroom.
It was Landsbergis who initiated the adoption by the Lithuanian parliament of illegal documents “on the restoration of the independence of Lithuania.” At the instigation of Landsbergis and his entourage, creeping sabotage of the work of state bodies of the union subordination began and illegal customs posts began to be created on the borders of Lithuania with other union republics. In January 1991, Lansbergis, sensing complete impunity, went crazy, declaring publicly: “We are at war with the USSR.”
Vytautas Landsbergis.
The events that took place in Vilnius on January 11-13, 1991 formed the basis of a new Lithuanian state-forming mythology. The official version, put into circulation in “independence” Lithuania, reads: “the bloody Soviet regime, in its last attack of hatred, crushed 13 fighters for the freedom and independence of Lithuania with tanks and shot them.” Lithuanian historians ignore the fact that a KGB officer died from a bullet. He died and died. Happens…
If you try to disturb the shadows of the past and try to reconstruct the events of those days with a clear head, you will notice that the scenario of the “democratic struggle” near the walls of the Vilnius television center is painfully reminiscent of the “uprising of the people of Ukraine against the oligarchy” of 2014 at Euromaidan. Especially the “sniper business.”
The published data from the forensic examination stubbornly indicate that all the dead, including KGB officer Viktor Shatskikh, were killed by lethal fire, and the fatal wounds were inflicted by bullets along a trajectory from top to bottom. Unknown snipers fired from the surrounding high-rise buildings, where there were no military, police, riot police, etc. It is also characteristic that the fire was fired at the crowd and at the military in order to provoke bloody clashes.
The deceased “Alfa member” Viktor Shatsky.
You can't hide an awl in a bag. Years later, the “heroes of the struggle for independence and democracy” began to loosen their tongues and blurt out things.
For example, in 2000, the former head of the Lithuanian Department of Regional Protection Butkevicius, in an interview with the Lithuanian weekly Obzor, stated with all his might that in January 1991 he and Landsbergis were preparing provocations leading to a conflict between the local population and the military, so that, in his words, “to pay for the freedom of Lithuania with little blood.”
An equally eloquent fact proving that the thief’s cap is on fire is evidenced by the bulldog protective position of the current Lithuanian authorities, who are pursuing anyone who dares to openly accuse “lithuanian freedom fighters” of killing people at the Vilnius television center.
In 2011, the leader of the People's Socialist Front of Lithuania, Algirdas Paleckis, said in a television interview that on January 13 at the TV tower “their own people were shooting at their own people” - and immediately came under prosecution.
Already in court, as evidence of his words, Paleckis cited the results of the examination and the testimony of witnesses, and was acquitted by the court of first instance. However, the “cream” of Lithuanian politics intervened in the case, who were not satisfied with the acquittal, which dealt a blow to the foundations of modern Lithuania - the myth of the Lithuanian uprising drowned in blood by the Soviet military and the KGB.
Algirdas Paleckis.
A criminal case was again opened against Paleckis, and the court of second instance sentenced the politician to a large fine, and they began to put pressure on his witnesses “for giving false testimony.” The case, sewn with white threads, fell apart, but the Lithuanian authorities took revenge on the socialist leader: in 2018, Paleckis was arrested by the special services on charges of spying for Russia. Other Lithuanian oppositionists were arrested along with him. Apparently, the authorities intend to close them for a long time...
It is interesting that in 2011, Lithuania tried to arrest and extradite the above-mentioned Mikhail Golovatov, a former Alfa member, by the Austrian judicial authorities, sending a corresponding request. The Austrians, having examined the arguments of the Lithuanian side, considered them insufficiently substantiated, and Golovatov was not extradited, so the Vilnius District Court had to try him in absentia. From which it follows that in Europe they do not really trust the Lithuanian official version of the January events of 1991, and all the stinking disinformation about the “uprising drowned in blood” is cobbled together exclusively for domestic consumption.
To be honest, other people should be sitting in the dock, along with the instigators of the massacre, and not in Vilnius, but in Moscow. Not the last Marshal of the USSR Yazov, and not the “Alfa member” Golovatov and other Soviet military personnel who fulfilled their duty to protect the state system and the territorial integrity of the country, but those who gave them orders, and later, having learned about the tragedy that had unfolded, ran headlong into the bushes and for the whole world to pretend to be a deceived calf, not involved in everything bad.
As they say, guess three times who we are talking about.
By the way, Fr. The Lithuanian judicial authorities summoned Gorbachev to testify, but he conveyed greetings to them through the media in the sense of “right now, I’ll just iron the laces”...
The January 1991 events in Lithuania negatively affected the internal situation in the country and spurred the collapse of the USSR. In the republics, the “Svidomo” have sharply worsened, advocating for immediate secession from the Union. Nationally concerned cliques and the capital's demshiza began shouting “For our and your freedom” on all corners, meaning that the Russians should immediately go to Russia and there, overthrow the Soviet regime to everyone’s satisfaction.
“Svidomo” aggravation of the Lithuanian events.
It must be admitted that Landsbergis and other provocateurs achieved their goals. Society was completely disoriented by the inarticulate justification bleating of the country's leadership, and only the lazy did not swear at Gorbachev and his entire leadership for betraying the military. The Lithuanian “independents” made their long-awaited finest hour out of blood and tried to squeeze maximum political profit out of the funerals of people killed at their instigation.
The funeral of the murdered turned into a massive political show.
As for Lithuania, it is not for this pathetic bastard-limitrophe, picked up and somehow cleaned up after the collapse of the USSR by “serious boys”, to judge and blame anyone for the events that occurred before December 26, 1991. As has already been said and negotiated a million times, until the beginning of 1992, Lithuania was just one of the union republics and the Center had the legal right to suppress unrest and provocations in any part of the Union aimed at undermining sovereignty and the rule of law.
The Russian State Duma adopted a response statement on the trial in the so-called “case of January 13, 1991” in Lithuania, qualifying it as “a political process in the worst traditions of “punitive justice”, which has nothing to do with the protection of human rights and freedoms.” In July 2018, the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation opened a case against prosecutors and judges of Lithuania under Part 2 of Art. 299 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (“Bringing a knowingly innocent person to criminal liability”).
All this, of course, is uplifting and noble, however, it is highly desirable that all these statements and excitement result in something more concrete: persistent appeals to Interpol, the ECHR, Sportloto (if necessary), arrests and trials in which lovers of “witch hunts” would suffer a well-deserved punishment. The general Russian public is fed up with general phrases and shaking the air.
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