Late at night on 19 January 1990, after the demolition of the central television station and termination of phone and radio lines by Soviet special forces, 26,000 Soviet troops entered Baku, smashing through the barricades in order to crush the Popular Front. As claimed by Mikhail Gorbachev, gunmen of the Azerbaijani National Front opened fire on the soldiers; however, findings of the Moscow-based non-governmental organization "Shield" found no evidence of "armed combatants of Azerbaijani Popular Front", which was used as a motive to crush the civilian population on 20 January.