Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov drew attention of his Estonian counterpart, Eva-Maria Liimets, to the problem of discrimination of the republic’s Russian-speaking population, the Russian foreign ministry said on Friday after their telephone conversation, Tass informed.
“Liimets’ attention was drawn to the necessity of taking concrete steps to resolve problems linked with the conservation of mass non-citizenship, discrimination of the Russian-speaking population, plans for squeezing the Russian language out of the information and education space, politically motivated persecution of the Russian-language mass media and activists of the compatriot movement, and unacceptable history falsification attempts,” the ministry said.
The Russian top diplomat also confirmed that a mandatory condition for Russia’s ratification of the treaty on the border with Estonia is Tallinn’s implementation of the agreements reached in 2014 when border agreements were signed and its dropping territorial claims to Russia. “Russia would like to see the neighbor’s readiness for forming a normal non-confrontational atmosphere in bilateral relations,” the Russian foreign ministry said.
Apart from that, the two top diplomats discussed the current state of the Russian-Estonian relations, exchanged views on pressing problems of the regional and international agenda, including in the context of Estonia’s status of non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council in 2020-2021.