Putin: Monument desecration sows enmity
Russian President Vladimir Putin today told the annual massive Victory Day commemoration in Red Square that desecrating war monuments harmed relations between countries.
Mr Putin did not mention any country by name, but the statement in his speech before thousands of veterans, dignitaries and soldiers in Moscow echoed Russia’s outrage over the recent removal of the statue of a Red Army solider from central Tallinn, the capital of the former Soviet republic of Estonia.
The statue’s relocation and the planned reburial of soldiers who had been interred near it set off days of clashes between police and demonstrators, in which one person was killed and hundreds arrested.
Mr Putin condemned those who “are desecrating monuments to war heroes, and in doing that are insulting their own people and sowing enmity and a new distrust between nations and people”.
Victory Day, one of the most important holidays on Russia’s calendar, commemorates the defeat of Nazi Germany in the Second World War.
