US joins Baltic states to oppose Russian President's attempt to 'rewrite history'

After the Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Baltic states had consented to their 1940 annexation by the Soviet Union, the US Secretary of States Mike Pompeo reportedly opposed Russia’s attempt to rewrite history. The United States joined Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia on July 23 and in a joint statement with the foreign ministers of the three Baltic countries, Pompeo said that they stand firmly against any attempts by the Russians to rewrite history in order to justify the 1940 occupation and annexation. 

Mike Pompeo, in a separate statement, also called the Soviet occupation and annexation a ‘criminal act’. He added, “just as the United States never recognized the Baltic States’ forced incorporation into the Soviet Union, so it will never accept Russia’s attack on the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine and Georgia”.  

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Putin has been criticised by the three Baltic states after he reportedly said that incorporating Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia into the Soviet Union was implemented on a contractual basis, with the consent of the elected authorities. The European Union and NATO have also accused Russia of waging a campaign of disinformation to try to destabilise the West by exploiting divisions in society. 

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Putin accused of ‘historical lies’ 

While the Estonian Foreign Affairs ministry reportedly said that it had summoned the Russian ambassador to protest recent statement seeking to portray the occupation of Estonia and its annexation to the Soviet Union as legitimate, the Polish President Andrzej Duda accused Putin of ‘historical lies’. The Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Reinsalu in a statement also added that Russia is trying to give the impression that legitimacy can be born at the threat of a weapon, repression by mutual agreement, which is ‘extremely cynical’. 

Back in January, the European Commission had also criticised the Russian President and said that they would not tolerate the distortion of historic facts. Putin had reportedly suggested that Poland shared responsibility for starting World War II because it connived in Nazi German plans in 1938 to dismember Czechoslovakia. 

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