Captain and Commander of the Independent Security unit for major state institutions and leaders of the Republic, which is under the Lithuanian Ministry of Internal Affairs
In accordance with an agreement, our unit began guarding the Radio and TV building from the New Year. We increased our forces after the 10th of January, when we found out that paratroopers were beginning to enter Vilnius. 36 of our workers were in the building on the night of January 12th. Not all of them had pistols because some of them didn't have the right to carry a gun since they hadn't passed the first stage of training. After midnight we heard that tanks were approaching, so we warned all the policemen inside the building. Columns of tanks arrived simultaneously from both sides of Konarskio Street. There weren't any orders from the Ministry to open fire. Our weapons were useless next to the soldiers' tommy guns. Besides, we felt responsible for the Radio and Television workers who were in the building, and also for the thousands of citizens who came to defend the building. We still didn't expect the paratroopers to attack the building as if they were in a war.
I picked out some stronger men and all of us lined up on the stairs by the entrance to the TV building. We thought: „We'll hold our ground, we won't let them in. Let them push us around!" But the paratroopers, throwing explosives, forced their way through the people surrounding the building and broke in through the glass wall. Then they knocked out the glass doors and rushed into the building, equipped with tommy guns and sticks and wearing bullet-proof vests.
It was similar at the Radio Center. Unable to break in through the door, they broke the window, let out smoke, and jumped inside. They thrust their guns on our policemen, took away their weapons, and made them lie on the second floor.
In the TV building, you could hear shouting „Naševo ubili!" („Ours were killed!") It turned out that their bullet-proof vests weren't very reliable - their own gun had shot through one of them. The paratroopers returned, infuriated, and stuck their guns into the chests of the people who were blocking the entrance and dis¬armed them. There was nothing left for us to do except try to calm down the people who still didn't realize that they were using real bullets. We lined up and tried to push the crowd to the other side of the street and clear the square. The people didn't really listen because they wanted to contend with the enemy. Then paratroopers used tear-gas and we all stopped on the other side of Konarskio Street. Paratroopers lined up next to the building and fired until 4 in the morning. They fired over the people's heads but it was pretty distressful for us, as we were lined up opposite them to keep the crowd back. If someone had thrown a stone, the bullets would have been aimed at us.
Later, I was surprised to read V. Švedas explanation in the newspaper „Argumenty i fakti". He said that the building was guarded by 15 hundred heavily armed soldiers. That's how he described 36 policemen!
I can confirm that during the two days that I spent at the television building until that fatal night, no „Jedinstvo" delegation came. Either Švedas confused the television with another building, or he made the whole thing up. 9 of us who were in the building were injured, and 3 (P. Gnezdovas, J. Grinevičius, and A. Dapkus) are in the hospital. All of the people who were injured had been in the Radio building.
It seemed that the paratroopers were well prepared for the attack, as they knew all the passages and they knew where to run first. It could be that someone showed them the way. I still don't know where everything in the TV Center is very well, as we've only been there since the New Year, but the paratroopers walked around like it was their own home.
When they began to announce from an armored vehicle that the power had been passed into the hands of some committee, when we heard shooting in the city, and when nobody knew if Parliament had been taken over or not, our only concern was to protect the people who had gathered by the RTV building and then to rush to the Council of Ministers. Only later did Vice-Minister V. Zabarauskas arrive to tell us that Parliament was still working, and that we should stay by the building until morning.
Lithuania, 1991.01.13 : documents, testimonies, comments. - Vilnius : State Publishing Center, 1992, p. 178-179.