“This is hardly news. They are trying to implore something from us since the collapse of the USSR. But there is no legal grounds behind their claims because there was no occupation,” a member of the Upper House Committee for International Relations, Senator Oleg Morozov was quoted as saying on Wednesday by RIA Novosti.

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The Russian senator was commenting on the latest statements by the justice ministers of the two Baltic states who had announced that their countries’ governments would press for compensation from Russia for the “Soviet occupation” in the second half of the 20th century.

“From the political point of view these are all propaganda games in line with the spirit of modern Russophobia,” Senator Morozov added. He also emphasized that when Latvia and Estonia were Soviet republics they were developed parts of the USSR with high living standards.

“It remains a question which side owes more to the other, if we have a look at it from purely arithmetical point of view,” Morozov noted.

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Politicians and officials from Baltic states and some other nations of the former Eastern Bloc regularly raise the question of compensations from Russia for the Soviet period in their history.

Russian officials have repeatedly dismissed these claims as groundless as the Soviet Union was never in a state of war with these states and their accession into the USSR took place after they were liberated from Nazi troops by the Red Army. The Russian Foreign Ministry has previously stated that the accession of Baltic states into the Soviet Union was conducted in accordance with the international laws & norms that were in force in the mid-20th century.

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