The killing of seven Lithuanian officers at the Medininkai border checkpoint 32 years ago was “one of the episodes” of the war that Russia is waging in Ukraine today, Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė said on Monday.
In the early hours of July 31, 1991, members of the Soviet special police unit OMON killed seven Lithuanian customs, police and border guard officers who were on duty at the checkpoint on the border with Belarus.
The officers were Mindaugas Balavakas, Algimantas Juozakas, Juozas Janonis, Algirdas Kazlauskas, Antanas Musteikis, Stanislovas Orlavičius, and Ričardas Rabavicius.
Customs officer Tomas Šernas, the only survivor, was severely wounded.
Lithuania had declared independence form the Soviet Union in March 1990 and was trying to build up state institutions and take charge of its territory. It built customs posts along its borders with Belarus and Kaliningrad, which became one of the symbols of its struggle for independence.
Moscow, however, saw the posts as illegitimate and sent OMON troops to harass and attack them. According to a timeline published by the Lithuanian parliament, Seimas, they attacked Lithuanian border officials on 18 separate occasions in the run-up to the massacre, sometimes beating them and burning down the posts.
On July 31, OMON troops from Riga attacked the border post in Medininkai, which was on the highway between Vilnius and Minsk. It is thought that the attack took place around 04:00 because a watch belonging to one of the victims stopped at this hour.
“The sacrifice of the Medininkai defenders acquires a new meaning today,” Prime Minister Šimonytė said in a press release. “It was an episode of the war that is raging in Ukraine now.”
“Unfortunately, the freedom and strength of the state very often grow on soil soaked with the blood of heroes. The aggressor must be stopped and defeated in Ukraine if we want to prevent bloody tragedies in Lithuania,” she said.
The prime minister said that Lithuania had grown stronger over the 32 years, which would not have happened if “many people had not risked their lives to carry out their mission in the fight for freedom”.
Viktorija Čmilytė-Nielsen, speaker of the Lithuanian parliament, said that the Medininkai massacre was one of the most significant, albeit tragic, events for Lithuania’s statehood.
“In the first years of independence, our fragile state was under real threat every day,” the speaker said in a press release. “But the people of Lithuania were already determined to be free. They worked and stood guard under extreme conditions to defend what was then only a theoretically free state and to protect its borders and people.”
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