Putin says EU must stop Nazism in Baltic states

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday urged the European Union to clampdown on the “glorification” of Nazism in Latvia and Estonia.

“Some of the things we have witnessed in some Eastern European nations provoke real feelings of surprise and incomprehension,” Putin told leaders of the European Jewish Congress, Interfax news agency reported.

“We know that the negation of the Holocaust is punishable by law in several European countries but at the same time the actions of Latvian and Estonian authorities openly favour a glorification of the Nazis and their allies,” he said.

“These facts go unnoticed by the European Union,” he said, while admitting there were stray acts of anti-Semitism in Russia as well as “chauvinistic, xenophobic and nationalistic demonstrations.”

“Since Estonia’s independence, not a single Nazi criminal has been condemned,” Putin said.

“In Latvia, each March 16, and with the approval of the official authorities, there are neo-Nazi rallies” to mark the creation of the Waffen-SS legion in the country, Putin added in comments from the speech broadcast by Russian television. The Russian government was outraged this year when Estonian authorities moved a Cold War era memorial to the Soviet army from the centre of Tallin.

And Putin said: “We are seeing a position on the limit of hypocrisy by certain European structures over the moving of the liberation soldier monument in Tallin.”

Moscow, Thursday, AFP