Russia positioned Estonia’s Prime Minister Kaja Kallas and different senior Baltic politicians on the needed listing on Tuesday for allegedly desecrating “historical memory.”
“These people are responsible for decisions that are actually tantamount to desecration of historical memory,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated, in response to the TASS news company.
The Russian authorities accuse Baltic officers of demolishing memorials to Soviet troopers.
In addition to Kallas, Estonian Secretary of State Taimar Peterkop and Lithuanian Culture Minister Simonas Kairys are additionally on the Russian Interior Ministry’s needed listing, in response to Russian media.
The declaration is seen as symbolic since not one of the politicians is predicted to journey to Russia any time quickly.
But Baltic officers sloughed it off, saying they thought of the designation a badge of honor.
Russia’s transfer is nothing shocking.
This is but extra proof that I’m doing the precise factor – the #EU‘s sturdy assist to #Ukraine is a hit and it hurts Russia. 1/
— Kaja Kallas (@kajakallas) February 13, 2024
“I am glad that my work to remove the ruins of Sovietization has not gone unnoticed,” Kairys commented on his inclusion on the listing.
Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis, chatting with the BNS news company in Vilnius on Tuesday about Kallas’ designation, described Russia’s “political assessment” as a “kind of honor for people who support Ukraine and support the fight of good against evil.”
Russia stated it’s critical concerning the “crimes” these leaders are alleged to have dedicated.
“You have to answer for crimes against the memory of those who liberated the world from Nazism and fascism. And this is just the beginning,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote on Telegram, explicitly referring to Kallas and Peterkop.
In the summer season of 2022, a couple of months after the beginning of the all-out Russian invasion of Ukraine, Estonia demolished a Soviet battle memorial – a reproduction of a T-34 tank with a purple Soviet star – within the city of Narva on the border with Russia.
In 2007, the relocation of a bronze statue, one other Soviet battle memorial, from a park in Tallinn to the outskirts of town sparked days of protests. One particular person was killed within the riots and greater than 1,000 folks had been detained. Angry Russian-speaking Estonians stated that the elimination of the monument erased their historical past.
A variety of monuments from the Soviet period had been additionally dismantled in Lithuania following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Source: www.dailysabah.com