AP/CNN wrote:MOSCOW (AP) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin is prepared to renounce a notorious 1939 pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union that divided up much of eastern Europe between the two powers, Estonia's president said Thursday.
Speaking on Estonian national broadcaster Eesti Raadio after meeting at the Kremlin with Putin, President Arnold Ruutel said the Russian president had told him he would renounce the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop pact.
"He said that Russia as the legal successor of the Soviet Union supports annulling the pact and considers this the right thing to do," Ruutel said. "I believe it's very important for us and the Russian society to note that Russia has done this."
A statement released by the Kremlin said the two leaders discussed the May celebrations in Moscow to mark the 60th anniversary of the Nazi defeat in World War II, but made no mention of the pact.
Kremlin spokespeople refused to comment.
The 1939 nonaggression pact named for Nazi Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov was signed in secret and carved much of Eastern Europe up between the two countries, including the Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, which were placed under the Soviet sphere of control.
Soviet forces occupied the Baltic states in June 1940 but were driven out by the Germans a year later. The Red Army retook the Baltics in 1944 and the three countries were reincorporated back into the Soviet Union.
Russia's tense relations with Baltics
Russia has invited Estonian and other Baltic leaders to Moscow on May 9 for the World War II anniversary celebrations, but only one leader, Latvian President Vaira Vike-Freiberga, has agreed to participate. They became independent in the Soviet breakup of 1991.
Last week, in announcing she would travel to Moscow, Vike-Freiberga called on Russia to denounce the pact, saying that in 1945 only half of Europe could rejoice in the defeat of the Nazis and the end of occupation.
"I will be extending a hand of friendship to Russia," Vike-Freiberga said last week. "Latvia invites Russia to display the same degree of conciliation to Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, and to condemn the crimes of the Second World War, regardless of who committed them."
According to Russia's Foreign Ministry, Vike-Freiberga's statement placed equal blame for World War II on the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, a position it called "absurd."
"We consider this statement as another attempt to distort the history of the Second World War," Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko said in a statement.
"It is difficult to take such demarche as a testimony of readiness 'to extend a hand of friendship' to Russia," he said.
Russia has tense relations with the Baltic nations.
The three, new members of the European Union, often accuse Russia of bullying and of failing to adequately acknowledge the Soviet occupation. They have asserted their ethnic and linguistic identities, upsetting their significant ethnic Russian minorities and prompting accusations of unfair treatment from Moscow.
Russia only recently ratified a border treaty with Lithuania and has yet to do so with Latvia and Estonia. Both have stated their willingness to recognize existing borders with Russia, but Russia has refused to sign any treaty, tying such an agreement to the plight of Russians in the two Baltic countries.
More likley one of those "Woops we still got that on the books?" Hey lets get some free goodwill out of it
"A cult is a religion with no political power." -Tom Wolfe Pardon me for sounding like a dick, but I'm playing the tiniest violin in the world right now-Dalton
Would have been hilarious had they actually invaded some nation citing that as the source for legitimacy of the operation.
Devolution is quite as natural as evolution, and may be just as pleasing, or even a good deal more pleasing, to God. If the average man is made in God's image, then a man such as Beethoven or Aristotle is plainly superior to God, and so God may be jealous of him, and eager to see his superiority perish with his bodily frame.
AMX wrote:Strange... I kinda assumed that operation Barbarossa made the treaty null and void, anyway...
Yes, but the Soviet Union later, after the war, openly used the secret protocol as a justification for the incorporation of the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) into the Soviet Union.
Mange the Swede wrote:Yes, but the Soviet Union later, after the war, openly used the secret protocol as a justification for the incorporation of the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) into the Soviet Union.
HemlockGrey wrote:Maybe this is just a step towards repudiating the Treaty of Beijing and invading China.
Ohpleaseohpleaseohplease...
Chronological Incontinence: Time warps around the poster. The thread topic winks out of existence and reappears in 1d10 posts.
Out of Context Theatre, this week starring Darth Nostril.
-'If you really want to fuck with these idiots tell them that there is a vaccine for chemtrails.'
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