VILNIUS, March 14 (RAPSI) - Russian embassy in Lithuania will protect the legal interests of Russian national Yuri Mel (born 1968) who has been detained on suspicion of involvement in clashes in January 1991 after declaration of independence from the USSR, representative of the embassy Alexander Mamayev told RIA Novosti.

He was detained on Wednesday on the border with the Kaliningrad region. The prosecutor's office asked for a three-month detainment of the suspect.

Lithuania's Prosecutor General's Office has declared 79 citizens of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine suspects in the criminal case opened in the aftermath of the clashes.

They are suspected of battery, murder, endangering other's wellbeing, as well as unlawful military actions against civilians. A court in Lithuania has issued European arrest warrants for the suspects who reside outside Lithuania.

The Prosecutor General's Office hopes to send the 700-volume case to court this month.

Lithuania declared independence from the Soviet Union on March 11, 1990. But Moscow denounced the move as illegal and put an economic blockade on the country between April and late June 1990.

In January 1991, a series of unauthorized protests swept across Lithuania after which Soviet military forces entered the republic. On the night of January 13, Soviet armored vehicles and tanks rolled into the center of Vilnius. Soviet troops clashed with civilians at a local TV tower, leaving 14 dead and over 600 injured.

Security personnel later claimed that the clashes were a result of a provocation, and that the victims were killed by sharpshooters.