The Estonian American National Council (EANC) recently joined with two protests of the Joint Statement by President Donald J. Trump and President Vladimir Putin of Russia Commemorating the 75th Anniversary of the Meeting on the Elbe issued by the White House on April 25th.
The Joint Baltic American National Committee (JBANC) and the Central and East European Coalition (CEEC) both published statements objecting to the terms of the commemoration and to President Trump’s engagement with the Russian president.
EANC is a member of both JBANC and CEEC and helped craft the written protests. The JBANC statement was printed in last week’s paper and is posted at www.jbanc.org, and the CEEC version can be found on here and at ceecoalition.us.
EANC fully concurs with the points made in both objections. The Trump-Putin statement portrays the meeting of the U.S. and Soviet armies on April 25, 1945 as a symbol of victory over the Nazis and cooperation between the two powers.
It fails to recognize the historical context established by the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop pact that ushered in 50 years of Soviet-led oppression across the Baltic counties and nations of central and eastern Europe.
Perhaps more concerning is the statement’s tacit support for the Kremlin’s ongoing historical revisionism and open campaigns to destabilize Western democracies.
The JBANC and CEEC objections call for the U.S. to remember the decades of American leadership in the Cold War against the Soviet-led spread of communism and support for the democracies that emerged in 1991.
They also caution against becoming complicit in Putin’s malign agenda, which initiated the joint statement by the two presidents. U.S. policy and action should uphold democratic values, not enable efforts to undermine them.
EANC will always reinforce historical accuracy while promoting democracy, individual liberty, rule of law, and national security and sovereignty wherever we find an opportunity to do so, and particularly when Estonia and its neighbors are affected.
Karin Shuey
Washington, DC Director
Estonian American National Council
www.estosite.org
