VILLAGE (Reuters) – The United States joined Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia on Thursday to oppose any attempt by Russia to rewrite history after President Vladimir Putin said the Baltic states had given their consent to its 1940 annexation by the sovietic Union.
FILE PHOTO: United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks during a meeting with British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab (not pictured) at Lancaster House in London, Britain, July 21, 2020. REUTERS / Hannah McKay / Pool / File Photo
“We are firmly against any attempt by Russia to rewrite history to justify the occupation and annexation of the Baltic states by the Soviet Union in 1940,” wrote United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in a joint statement with the foreign ministers of the three Baltic countries. countries.
The statement marked the 80th anniversary of a 1940 statement by then-acting US Secretary of State Sumner Welles condemning the Soviet takeover of all three countries.
The Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Thursday that it had summoned the Russian ambassador to protest “recent statements seeking to portray the occupation of Estonia and its annexation to the Soviet Union as legitimate.”
“Russia is trying to give the impression that legitimacy may arise from the threat of a weapon, mutually agreed repression; this is extremely cynical,” Foreign Minister Urmas Reinsalu said in a statement.
Putin wrote last month that the incorporation of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia into the Soviet Union “was implemented on a contractual basis, with the consent of the elected authorities.”
“This was in line with the international and state laws of the time,” he added in the article for the American magazine The National Interest.
The European Union and NATO have accused Russia of launching a disinformation campaign to try to destabilize the West by exploiting divisions in society. Russia denies such tactics.
The European Commission said in January that it would not tolerate the distortion of historical events after Putin suggested that Poland shared responsibility for starting World War II because it conspired in the German Nazi plans in 1938 to dismember Czechoslovakia.
Polish President Andrzej Duda accused Putin of “historical lies”.
In 1989, during the period of glasnost, or opening, under Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Moscow denounced the secret Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939 to divide Poland and the Baltic states that allowed the Soviet Union to annex the region.
Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia became independent from the Soviet Union when it collapsed and are now members of the EU and NATO.
Andrius Sytas Reports, Timothy Heritage Edition
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