In a speech to the Lithuanian Parliament January 13, 2007, Carl Bildt - Swedish Foreign Minister and former IDU Chairman - paid tribute to the struggle for freedom in Lithuania, and to the importance of the Lithuanian freedom fighters' victory for Europe as a whole:

- The battle for the TV tower in Vilnius in the early morning hours of January 13, 1991, as well as the popular protection of this very building, was one of the decisive battles of our modern times, said Bildt and continued: Some of you who are here saw your dear ones lose their lives during that night. As we remember and honour them, we should remember the wider importance of the ultimate sacrifice they made.

Had the forces of Soviet reaction succeeded during those hours and days here in Vilnius, they might well have succeeded in Riga and Tallinn in the following days as well, and they had with certainty moved earlier and more decisively in Moscow as well. Our common history would have been written differently.

But it was when the images of the heroism by the TV tower of Vilnius were broadcast across the world that it all failed. They had the machines of destruction and oppression. But you had the ideals of freedom, the dreams of independence and the determination to protect your democracy.

Against this, tanks in the long run can do little, said Carl Bildt.