Russian Ambassador Recommends Estonia's Ilves to Follow Finnish Leader in Learning Russian

MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 23rd August, 2018) Russian Ambassador to Estonia Alexander Petrov said Thursday that former Estonian President Toomas Ilves, who has claimed there was no merit in learning Russian, should take the example of Finnish leader Sauli Niinisto, who has recently revealed himself as a student of the language.

"Former Estonian President Toomas Ilves has stated directly that Russian is the language of our invaders, and that there is no need to learn it here in Estonia. Recently, when [Russian] President [Vladimir Putin] met with the Finnish president in Sochi, I found out with interest that [Niinisto] was learning Russian. And he even said some phrases in Russian during a conversation with President [Putin]. This is a good example to follow," Petrov said at a round table in the Rossiya Segodnya International Information Agency in Moscow.

Recently, anti-Russian rhetoric has become more heard in the Baltic states. The Estonian Justice Ministry said that Estonia and Latvia would look into the possibility of demanding that Russia compensate for the damages the two countries suffered while they were part of the Soviet Union, which they refer to as "the Soviet occupation."

The Russian leadership has repeatedly pointed out that the Baltic countries joined the Soviet Union in accordance with the legal framework of the time. The national governments had been in place in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania for the duration of their USSR membership, apart from the time of the World War II occupation by Germany.