Vilnius University said in a statement that a DNA test had confirmed that the remains found earlier this year in a Vilnius cemetery did, in fact, belong to Adolfas Ramanauskas, who operated under the nom de guerre Vanagas.

He was one of the most senior commanders of the 1944-1953 Lithuanian partisan resistance movement against Soviet terror, mass deportations to Siberia, and forced conscription into the Red Army.

Enjoying broad support in the countryside, it numbered around 20,000 “forest brothers” in its initial stages, but that number quickly fell to 5,000, and by 1952 only several hundred active partisans remained.

“For patriotic Lithuanians, they were heroes, who embarked on their hopeless struggle in order to bear witness to Lithuania’s longing for freedom and independence,” said Kęstutis Girnius, a philosopher who has authored a book about Lithuania’s post-war guerrilla warfare.

After several years in hiding, Vanagas was captured by Soviet authorities in 1956, brutally tortured, executed the following year and thrown into an unidentified mass grave.

It was only last year that Lithuanian archaeologists received a tip about the whereabouts of fighters executed for “political crimes”.

“The discovery and positive identification of his remains has raised expectations that the bodies of other partisan leaders will be uncovered and finally given a proper burial,” Girnius said.

During World War Two, the Soviet Union occupied and annexed Lithuania, which became the first Soviet republic to declare independence in 1990, before joining the European Union and NATO in 2004.