A war of words between Estonia and Russia escalated further on Wednesday amid Moscow's accusing Tallinn of undermining Russian sovereignty in a controversial speech by Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves last weekend.
In the aftermath of the speech at the Congress of Finno-Ugric Peoples in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia, Moscow accused Estonia of undermining its sovereignty, but Tallinn said Ilves' remarks were mininterpreted.
A member of the Russian parliament Konstantin Kosachev accused Estonia of encouraging Russia's Finno-Ugric peoples to call for independence from Russia and mistreating Estonia's own national minorities, mostly local Russians.
Ilves - along with the rest of the Estonian delegation - walked out in protest on June 28 after being harangued by Kosachev, chairman of the foreign affairs committee of the Russian State Duma.
"Konstantin Kosachev's address was impolite and extremely inappropriate, and the facts in the speech were also incorrect. Therefore, the Estonian delegation had no other option but to leave the hall as a sign of protest," Ilves said in a statement emailed to Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa on Wednesday. The spat is the latest episode in the frosty ties between Estonia and Russia, which had cooled off after the Estonia decided to relocate a Soviet-era monument last year.
In his speech to the congress, Ilves compared Estonians, Hungarians and Finns, nations who have their own independent states and chose European values of freedom and democracy with Korelians, Udmurts and other Finno-Ugric peoples, who make part of the Russian Federation and do not have their own independent states.
"The main premise of the speech was a simple truth?all cultures are equal, regardless of whether the people are large or small, politically independent or not," Ilves said in his e-mail to dpa. Kosachev, however, saw the speech as an attack on Russia. "It was a direct attack on the territorial integrity of Russia, which is absolutely unacceptable," Kosachev was quoted by Interfax news agency as saying.
Ilves walked out after Kosachev accused Estonia in mistreating its national minorities. "In Russia, Finno-Ugric peoples don't experience any different problems from other nationalities who inhabit the Russian Federation, unlike, for example, Russian-speaking citizens in Estonia," Kosachev said in his speech to the congress. Russia frequently criticises the small Baltic nation of Estonia, which joined the EU in 2004, in discrimination against its large Russian-speaking population.
The rift between the two countries intensified when Estonia decided to relocate a Soviet-era monument from the centre of the capital Tallinn, which caused two days of riots, mostly involving local Russians.
Comments
Comments are closed.