Russian Patriarch Kirill to visit Estonia

The Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill on Friday begins an unprecedented three-day visit to Estonia, an ex-Soviet EU Baltic state with a sizeable Russian Orthodox minority, Estonia’s Orthodox church said Thursday.

About 300,000 of Estonia’s 1.3 million inhabitants are ethnic Russians, whose families mostly arrived in the Baltic state after the World War II takeover of the country by the Soviet Union.

The ultra-conservative Kirill, who is a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, will lay flowers at a Tallinn memorial to victims of the June 14, 1941 first massive Soviet-era deportations of Estonians to the Russian far east, long a thorny issue in bilateral ties.

Kirill will also meet Estonian Prime Minister Andrus Ansip and Lutheran church head Andres Poder.

Prayers at Tallinn’s landmark onion-domed Orthodox Alexander Nevsky Cathedral are scheduled for Friday and the consecration of a new Russian Orthodox church for Sunday.

Only around a third of Russians living in Estonia are citizens with the right to vote.

A majority of Estonians identify themselves as secular, with just 29 percent saying they were believers in a 2011 census.

Around 16 percent identified themselves as Russian Orthodox, while 10 percent said they belonged to the Lutheran church.