Speaker of Russia's Parliament: Latvian, Estonian Authorities Must Review Their Policies Concerning Ethnic Minorities

Yesterday, during his visit to St. Petersburg, Gennady Seleznyov, Speaker of the State Duma, said, 'The authorities of Latvia and Estonia can not feel calm and complacent because we keep troubling them at both the PACE and OSCE. Speaker also said that Russia was critical of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) for not paying enough attention to the situation with ethnic minorities in Latvia and that 'There are already cases presented to the court in Strasbourg that promise nothing good for the Baltic states', adding that these republics must stop applying double standards and 'the provocative acts against the veterans of the Great Patriotic War. If these countries want to join the European union without looking too different from everyone else, they must revise their policies as concerns our compatriots'.