Russian tanks, destroyed and seized by Ukrainian forces last year, have been on display in the capitals of the three Baltic states over the past few days, allowing Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians to take photos and show solidarity with Ukraine.
But among those visiting the tanks were members of the country’s ethnic Russian minorities, some laying flowers and lighting candles to commemorate dead Russian soldiers and to express their support for Moscow in its war against Ukraine, the Associated reported Press (AP).
Russian gestures of support for Moscow led to some altercations and at least one fight in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius, highlighting the heightened tensions in those countries between the Baltic majorities and the sizeable Russian minorities in those countries.
On Wednesday, supporters and opponents of the war quarreled in front of a burning Russian T72 tank that was hit by Ukrainian forces near Kiev on March 31. This was exhibited on Freedom Square in the center of the Estonian capital, a square decorated with Ukrainian and Estonian flags, where the Ukrainian anthem could be heard in the neighboring St. John’s Church.
The Estonian Defense Ministry said Saturday the tank was “a symbol of Russia’s brutal invasion,” which also shows “that the attacker can be defeated.”
Last week, Ukraine’s Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov announced the tanks would be displayed as museum exhibits in the three Baltic capitals and Berlin, after similar displays in Poland and the Czech Republic last year.
“It’s a powerful reminder for all of us how well and peacefully we live while people die in Ukraine,” said Darius Klimka, a Vilnius resident.
In Estonia, Anatoly Yarkov, a 78yearold Soviet Army veteran who showed up to see the tank in Tallinn, said he was annoyed that Ukraine was fighting Russia in a war he said was leading to the collapse of the USSR from 1991.
“Russian tanks are burning again like in the war with the Nazis,” underlined Yarkov.
The Kremlin regime, led by Russian President Vladimir Putin, has been promoting the unsubstantiated narrative that Moscow’s military is fighting neoNazis, even though Ukraine has a Jewish president who lost family members in the Holocaust and who heads a democratically elected government backed by the West.
While some Russians in Vilnius put flowers in the tank, the Lithuanian city government placed a trash can next to it with a sign that read: “For flowers, candles and Soviet nostalgia”.
A person placed a toilet near the tank to commemorate the activities of the Russian armed forces.
Lithuanian police have opened several investigations into incidents, including one in which a man was beaten for removing flowers.
Not all Russians are on Moscow’s side, and Marina, a 60yearold Russian citizen who did not give her last name for security reasons, stressed that she condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine and praised the response of Kiev forces.
In Berlin, the tank also became a place of remembrance: proRussian supporters laid red roses on a destroyed tank on display in front of the Russian embassy.
The flowers were eventually removed and the Russian Embassy refused to organize the placement of the flowers, but stressed that this was a “sincere gesture by German citizens and compatriots in Germany”.
For Nerijus Maliukevicius, an analyst at the Institute of International Relations and Political Science in Vilnius, putting proRussian honorifics on the tanks is part of a tactic orchestrated by the Kremlin, who points out that images of these gestures have been circulated on social networks and state television.
“This is how you create an alternative reality of a Europe that supports Putin,” he said in statements to AP.