[haku]

Originally Posted by la aurora

I don't know how important memories of the WW2 are in France

The 8th of May is a holiday here but it's more focused on reconciliation and honoring the loss on both sides (and for most ordinary people it's simply a 4-day sunny weekend and they don't think of war at all). As you may know, France and Germany reconciled very quickly, they both founded the ECSC (ancestor of the EU) in 1951, only 6 years after the war. Now over 60 years have passed, we've just celebrated the 50th anniversary of the EU and most people see WWII as a long gone historical event.

Originally Posted by la aurora

Those people that were burried there in Estonia were not really communists or stalinists. They were fighting against a fierce power that tried to take over the Europe.

That's how Russians see it, but that's not how Europeans see it. The Soviet Union and Nazi Germany signed the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in 1939 in which they agreed to divide up the countries situated between them (Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Finland), and Estonia fell in the Soviet half of the cake. The Soviet Union occupied Estonia as soon as 1940, and the following years the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany fought over that piece of land, it was simply two totalitarian states fighting for supremacy over a land that did not belong to them in the first place, and the well being of Estonian people were the least of their concerns.
From an Estonian point of view, both occupations were equally illegal, unwanted, and ruthless. It's understandable that they consider this monument as a symbol of Soviet occupation.

It's to be noted that the annexation of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania by the Soviet Union was never recognized by Western countries, from 1940 to 1991, they were officially considered sovereign countries under Soviet occupation.

Originally Posted by la aurora

Putin said what Bush would say if we suddenly 'felt insecure' and decided to place a couple of such bases somewhere in Latin America. Look at the map and check where USA, Russia and Poland with Czech Rep are situated. Administration of USA was acting rather agressivly in last years. They got out of several agreements they found 'uncomfortable' for them, they attacked Iraq without really asking for permission from the rest of the world. I'd be really surprised to see Putin happy about them planning to place their bases in Eastern Europe. What other reaction would you expect?

I can be accused of many things, but not of being pro-American. I mentioned in the USA thread that i didn't agree with the expansion of the US missile shield in Europe. That being said, Russia has to come to terms with the fact that countries like Poland, Czechia or Estonia are now EU and NATO members and no longer Russian satellites, there is and will be EU and NATO military in those countries, it's only normal.
I'm a reasonable person though, i don't agree with those who think that the EU and NATO should expand even further East to Ukraine or the Caucasus, i think the EU and Russia can be satisfied with the Finland-Romania line as the new Iron Curtain.
Russia really shouldn't feel threatened anyway, it's by far the largest country on the planet with 17 million km2 of territory, the EU is only 4 million km2, 4 times smaller! When i was young i had to live with the Red Army stationed only 1000km from where i lived pointing nuclear missiles at us… So i think Russia can live with the EU and NATO as a neighbor (Russian still has enough fire power to annihilate the entire European continent in a couple of hours anyway), especially since the EU and NATO are nowhere near as aggressive as the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact were in the old days, Russia has really nothing to worry about.