Reconciliation on blood

Estonian authorities are afraid of Victory Day

The Estonian authorities intend to fully embrace the two days of May, when the country's residents will remember the events of the Second World War. Tomorrow the republic will celebrate the Day of Remembrance and Reconciliation, and on May 9, veterans of the Great Patriotic War will celebrate the next anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany. For the first time , they will not be able to lay flowers at the mass grave and the monument to the Liberator Soldier on Tõnismägi Square, which were hastily liquidated at the end of April by order of Estonian Prime Minister Andrus Ansip . Moreover, simply gathering for veterans will be fraught with clashes with the police . The Director General of the Estonian Police, Raivo Aeg, said in a televised statement yesterday that until May 11, the ban on public gatherings will remain in Tallinn and the capital's suburbs.

Having analyzed the bloody events of the end of April, the Estonian forum “Civil Peace” condemned both “the shameless show of force shown during the dismantling of the monument to those who fell in the Second World War, and the vandalism that lasted two nights.” The initiator of the forum was the mayor of Tallinn and chairman of the Estonian Center Party Edgar Savisaar, who had previously condemned the actions of the authorities to dismantle and transfer the Bronze Soldier and exhume the remains of Soviet soldiers. Tomorrow, the monument to the Soldier-Liberator is to be officially opened at the Tallinn War Cemetery. But the rules of the ceremony have not yet been approved, and Prime Minister Ansip has already announced: “I am not participating in the event on May 8.” The prospects for the reburial of the remains of the victims are also very vague. According to the Eesti Express newspaper, this could happen at the end of June, “when a wall is built behind the monument.”

The Estonian government is trying to shift responsibility for the Tallinn unrest onto Russia and set the European Union against Moscow. “We believe it is necessary for the European Union to respond to Russia’s behavior as strictly as possible. This could mean the suspension or abandonment of various negotiations between the European Union and Russia,” said the head of Estonian diplomacy, Urmas Paet, recently. He added that “Russia’s actions against Estonia are a matter for the entire European Union.”

Brussels does not succumb to such “provocations,” although the clashes in Tallinn and the siege of the Estonian embassy in Moscow probably made an impression there. The head of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, discussing in an interview the issue of respect for human rights in Russia, made a reservation that in relations with the EU we must proceed from the fact that the European Union is “based on solidarity between member countries.” The next day, reports appeared in European newspapers that Brussels intended to sharply toughen its position on Russia’s accession to the WTO directly in connection with the “Estonian” events - the boycott of Estonian goods, as well as problems with the delivery of oil by rail that suddenly arose due to the repair of the Oktyabrskaya Railway. The head of Russian Railways, Vladimir Yakunin, was forced to explain that his company does not plan to change freight flows in connection with the events in Estonia, and in general, Russian Railways, as a wholly owned state-owned company, “does not and cannot have any special conditions” in connection with these events. The European Commission also issued a refutation of the publications. "Reports of a sharp tightening in the EU's approach to Russia's request for WTO membership are completely wrong," said Trade Commissioner Peter Power.

Nevertheless, there have been calls from Tallinn to cancel the upcoming Russia-EU summit on May 18 in Samara. However, the first deputy chairman of the Russian State Duma Committee on International Affairs, Leonid Slutsky, doubts the reality of the disruption of the Samara summit meeting. In an interview with Vremya Novostey, he noted the mutual interest of Brussels and Moscow in fruitful cooperation. But Mr. Slutsky did not rule out the possibility that someone “benefits from playing on contradictions.” He recalled Poland’s demarches last year on the eve of the Russia-EU Helsinki summit, as well as Estonia’s attempts to counteract the Russian-German project to build the Nord Stream gas pipeline. Tallinn, under bureaucratic pretext, did not allow Moscow to carry out the research work necessary for construction in the Estonian economic zone of the Baltic Sea. It was also announced in Estonia that Prime Minister Ansip will not receive the Chairman of the Board of Shareholders of the Nord Stream company, Gerhard Schröder, who is arriving in Tallinn tomorrow. The former German Chancellor sharply criticized the demolition of the Bronze Soldier and the reburial of the remains of Soviet soldiers.

According to Mr. Slutsky, there remains “the danger of dismantling and moving” other monuments and graves of Soviet soldiers in Estonia. And there are about three hundred of them in the country.

The lack of national reconciliation in Estonia is also evidenced by attacks on monuments erected in honor of those who supported the Nazis. On May 4, in Sinimäe, in the north-west of the country, a monument to soldiers of the 20th Estonian SS Division was toppled from its pedestal. It was installed in July 2006 at the same time as memorials honoring the Belgian and Dutch SS men. Then the demarche was condemned by the ambassadors of Belgium and the Netherlands to Estonia.

Katerina LABETSKAYA, Ivan SOLOVIEV