MOSCOW, June 18 (RIA Novosti). The Russian Foreign Ministry has asked the Baltic States not to confuse the terms "annexation" and "occupation."
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir Chizhov said on Monday that the two terms denote different things.
"In the case of the Baltic States, the situation arose as a consequence of the Soviet-German pact in 1940," Chizhov said. "This term was included in the international agreement between Russia and Lithuania that was signed in 1991.... Recently, certain politicians in particular countries have been adopting the term 'occupation.'"
"I do not approve of Stalin's politics, but in an international legal sense, all formalities in this area were observed during World War II," he said.
Chizhov warned the Baltic States against basing relations "only on history," joking that "if you walk ahead while looking back, you are likely to bump into something."
"We propose discussing historical issues within the context of historical dialogues," he said. "History should be left to historians and relations should be built on a basis of respect for each others' sovereignty. No one intends to attack your countries."
He also noted that Russia, as the legal successor of the USSR, took upon itself all the Soviet Union's debts, "including the Baltic share.... We continue to pay these debts."
