Border Treaty Is No 'Stick' to Beat Russia With, MP Says
Regardless of the increasingly tense relations between the European Union and Russia, the Estonian Parliament must continue with the ratification of the Estonian-Russian border treaty, the head of the Parliament's foreign affairs committee said.
“The border treaty is not a stick we can use to influence Russia by freezing the ratification process,” MP Marko Mihkelson told the portal Lõunaeestlane.ee on Saturday.
“At the same time, it only makes sense to vote on the treaty if Russia does the same,” he added.
The treaty has an even greater security dimension for Estonia in light of the events in Ukraine, he said.
Mihkelson, of the IRL faction, said it is in Estonia's interest to have a legally defined border where neither party has territorial claims.
Meanwhile, opponents of the border treaty, which legitimizes the Russian Federation's 1944-1945 annexation of several thousand kilometers of land that was Estonia's between the world wars, announced they would hold weekly demonstrations, starting today at 17:00, against the treaty.
"The Estonian government is ignoring the will of the majority of the people not to ratify the border treaty and thus we find early parliamentary elections should be held promptly," said a group calling itself the Estonian Citizens' Committee 2 in a statement.