U.S. Scolds Soviets for Baltic Action

The White House today sharply rebuked the Soviet Union for sending troops into the Baltic states, calling the action “provocative and counterproductive.”

Soviet troops dispatched to enforce the Red Army draft rolled into the first of seven breakaway republics before dawn today in what secessionists called a pretext for bloody suppression.

An “armored column of Soviet military hardware” including 108 vehicles entered Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, at 4:35 a.m. and wound past the legislature before reaching an army barracks, the Lithuanian government said.

The Soviet decision to send troops to the seven republics to enforce the military draft “amounts to intimidation,” Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater told reporters at the White House.

The United States has never recognized the incorporation of the Baltic states into the Soviet Union.

Thousands of Soviet paratroopers were expected later today in Latvia, Estonia, Moldova, Armenia, Georgia and the Ukraine, ordered in Monday by the Soviet Defense Ministry.

Lithuanian Prime Minister Kazimeira Prunskiene flew to Moscow today and met with Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, Lithuanian officials said. Estonian President Edgar Savisaar also flew to Moscow.

The Defense Ministry said it ordered the troop deployments to protect national security.

Thousands of young men in the republics are ignoring Red Army draft orders. In the three Baltic republics, many are performing alternative service such as hospital or social work under laws passed by the republics but considered invalid by the Kremlin.

No violence was reported as troops arrived in Lithuania.