On January 13, 2022, Lithuanians filed a civil lawsuit in the Vilnius District Court, once again taking the first President of the Soviet Union, Gorbachev, to court. Most of these Lithuanians, who are the families of the victims of the 13 January 1991 case, believe that Gorbachev bears the primary responsibility for the case.
On the evening of January 13, 1991, Lithuanians demanding independence from the Soviet Union gathered at the radio and television center in the capital, Vilnius, trying to stop soviet troops from taking over the television station. Clashes ensued between the two sides, with Soviet soldiers firing on the radical Lithuanians, killing 14 people and wounding more than 600. In September of the same year, the Soviet Union recognized Lithuanian independence.
Lithuanian prosecutors argued that Gorbachev, as commander-in-chief of the Soviet armed forces, failed to take steps in January 1991 to stop "war crimes" and that his Soviet security forces were responsible for the deaths of protesters at the radio and television center. Prosecutors tried in absentia Former Soviet Defense Minister Marshal Azov and some former Soviet soldiers, who were sentenced to 5 to 10 years in prison, respectively.
However, according to testimony gathered by the Soviet side after investigating the participants in this incident, the "January 13 case" was a deliberate provocation. Some people hid on the roofs of houses near the Vilnius Television Center and opened fire on Soviet soldiers and Lithuanian protesters, intensifying the contradictions between the two sides.
Moscow also rejected Lithuanian requests to summon Gorbachev. The Russian Commission of Inquiry concluded that Lithuania in early 1991 was not an independent state and that it remained part of the Soviet Union. The Soviet troops who entered Lithuania at that time performed their duties and acted in accordance with the law in the defense of the USSR.
In recent years, the baltic states have been pushing for the procedure of demanding compensation from the Russian authorities, and Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia believe that the three countries were occupied by the Soviet Union from 1940 to 1991 and that Russia, as the successor of the Soviet Union, should pay the occupation fee. (January 14, 2022, by Liu Peng)