"Our positions are at variance here", he said.
"Few people in Latvia will share the opinion that in the 1940s the Baltic countries voluntarily, in free elections voted for voluntary accession to the USSR"" the Latvian ambassador believes.
In his opinion, a dialog on such subjects is required.
On Wednesday the Russian Foreign Ministry circulated a commentary, saying that "the national organs of power operated in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia throughout their period of stay within the Soviet Union, except the times of German occupation of that part of the USSR in the years of the Great Patriotic War".
The ministerial commentary notes: "These authorities, again irrespective of their estimation today, in the person of the Supreme Soviets of the corresponding republics adopted in 1990 the resolutions which have led to their secession from the USSR".
"If we are to put to doubt the legitimacy of the organs of power during the Soviet period, the question arises of the legitimacy of declaring independence by the Baltic republics", the Russian Foreign Ministry notes.
It recalls that "neither the introduction of additional units of the Red Army, nor the making of the Baltic states part of the Soviet Union were contrary to the then international law".
"The term 'occupation' cannot be used for legal assessment of the situation prevailing in the Baltic region in the late 30s of the past century because the USSR and the Baltic states were not in the state of war and no hostilities were on. The introduction of troops was done on the contractual basis and with manifest agreement from the then authorities of these republics, no matter what they are thought of", the Russian foreign policy establishment stresses.
Correspondingly, it believes that "whatever claims, including the demand of material compensation for the ostensible damage which is a result, as somebody thinks, of what happened in 1940, are groundless".
The Russian Foreign Ministry condemns the attempts at "putting the USSR policy during that period on a par with the actions of the Hitler Germany, which waged in Europe a war of aggression for enslaving or destroying entire nations".
"As regards the assessment of the repressive actions of the regime existing in the USSR in the 30s-50s of last century, it was many times given both in the Soviet Union and Russia. Moscow sees no sense whatever in returning to this question another time", the ministerial commentary reads.
