Soviet Raid Cuts Lithuania Links to Outside World

Soviet commandos seized Lithuania’s key communications center Wednesday, shutting down its independent radio and television stations and cutting telephone and telegraph links to the republic for several hours.

The Soviet Interior Ministry said later in Moscow that the operation, carried out by its elite special forces, was aimed at seizing weapons and explosives in the central telecommunications center in Vilnius, the republic’s capital, and lasted about two hours.

But Lithuania’s pro-independence government saw the move as another show of strength by the Kremlin, a demonstration of how quickly and almost effortlessly the republic could be isolated from its backers in the West and even from mass support at home.

The operation may also have been a warning to President Mikhail S. Gorbachev that conservatives, despite their defeat in Parliament last week, remain a powerful force in the Soviet Union. Boris K. Pugo, the interior minister, was a leader in a Cabinet rebellion against Gorbachev’s policies.

The action seemed certain to embarrass Gorbachev as he seeks Western economic assistance to finance the Soviet Union’s transition to a market economy. The West has repeatedly warned Moscow against the use of force in the Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, all of which are seeking independence from the Soviet Union.

About 50 soldiers armed with assault rifles and machine guns swept into the four-story telecommunications center in Vilnius on Wednesday afternoon, forcing out most staff members but herding others into locked rooms, before beginning what they said was a search for arms caches hidden in a ventilation shaft by pro-independence groups.

Disconnecting all of the republic’s telephone, telex and cable links, breaking the circuits feeding television and radio broadcast antennas and finally turning off the center’s power, the soldiers halted all the usual means of communication between Lithuania and the outside, as well as mass communications within the republic.

Tensions were high, Lithuanian officials said, because many people thought the move was the first step in a larger action.

“We were completely cut off from the outside world,” Vidmantas Putelis, director of the official Lithuanian news agency, said later. “We did not know what would happen next or what the (commandos) would do.”

An Interior Ministry spokesman said that the troops found blasting caps, other explosives and bullets in the building.

The search had been approved, as required by law, by the chief Lithuanian prosecutor, who was appointed by Moscow and is not recognized by Lithuanian authorities, the ministry said.

After two hours, the commandos left, pushing their way through an angry crowd that had gathered outside, and after another two hours all the circuits were restored.

No arrests were made, according to the ministry spokesman, and no injuries were reported.

Soviet troops have occupied a series of key buildings in Vilnius since the Baltic state declared independence from the Soviet Union on March 11, 1990. The bloodiest attack came in January, when soldiers backed by tanks seized the republic’s television broadcasting center; 14 people were killed then.

In recent weeks, the commandos have taken over a number of customs checkpoints in Lithuania and neighboring Latvia and Estonia in what local officials see as a continuing war of nerves intended to undermine their determination to secede from the Soviet Union.

But the action on Wednesday afternoon struck Lithuanian officials as more ominous, demonstrating the republic’s vulnerability.

In a single quick move, the Soviet troops deprived Lithuania of one primary defense, its ability to appeal quickly to Western public opinion, and weakened another, the capacity to summon thousands of people into the streets through emergency radio and television broadcasts.

“This was a rehearsal for the overthrow of the legitimate government,” said Ceslovas Stankevicius, deputy chairman of Lithuania’s Supreme Council, the republic’s legislature.

Stankevicius called the incident a “provocation.” He denied that there had been any weapons or explosives in the center, accusing the commandos of planting whatever they said they had found.

The commandos told officials at the telecommunications center that they were operating under the orders of Pugo, the Soviet interior minister, according to Longinas Vasiliauskas, a Lithuanian representative in Moscow, but Pugo’s office denied it, saying the action was taken at the initiative of local commanders.

Pugo had supported a bid last week by Prime Minister Valentin S. Pavlov for emergency powers, telling the Supreme Soviet, the national legislature, that law and order were deteriorating in the country and that the crisis in the Baltic republics had grown even more severe.

Gorbachev defeated what liberals had called an attempt at “a constitutional coup d’etat” and had branded “Pavlov’s putsch,” in which much of Gorbachev’s authority might been stripped away and given to the prime minister.

But the action Wednesday inevitably prompted speculation that the conservatives were again trying to undercut the Soviet president.