Russian patriarch honours Estonia’s Soviet-era victims

The Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill on Friday honoured Estonian victims of Soviet-era deportations to Russia’s far east, in an apparent gesture of reconciliation over the still-thorny issue.

The ultra-conservative Kirill, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, laid flowers at Tallinn’s Linda memorial to the tens of thousands of Estonians who were deported starting June 14, 1941.

The anniversary has been an official day of mourning since Estonia broke free from the crumbling Soviet Union in 1991.

Kirill said at a ceremony that such suffering “should never happen again”, telling reporters “I hope the relations between our nations will get better and develop”.

The patriarch also paid homage to the Soviet troops who died in Estonia during World War II — a move that stirred controversy among residents who still view the Red Army as foreign occupiers.

Kirill met with both centre-right Prime Minister Andrus Ansip and his centre-left rival, Tallinn’s mayor Edgar Savisaar, who leads Estonia’s main opposition party, popular with the sizeable Russian minority.

Around 300,000 of Estonia’s 1.3 million population are ethnic Russians of Kirill’s Orthodox conviction. Most of their families arrived after the Baltic state’s World War II takeover by the Soviet Union.

Kirill will visit an abbey and hold a prayer service on Saturday, followed by a meeting Sunday with the head of Estonia’s Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tallinn, where he will also consecrate a new Russian Orthodox church.

Just 29 percent of Estonians identify themselves as believers, according to a 2011 census.

Of those, some 16 percent identified themselves as Russian Orthodox, while 10 percent said they belonged to the Lutheran Church.