"It is a normal humanist move to pay tribute to the memory of people fallen in World War II. This particular instance, however, is problem-laden with unscrupulous political gambling on historical memory and the tragedy of people who served in the Estonian SS legion," says the document.
"That is the angle under which we regard statements made during and after the unveiling ceremony-Estonians who fought on the nazi side were pictured as liberation campaigners and fighters for national independence.
"It was unconvincing, to put it mildly, to allege that Estonian legionaries had never fought for Hitlerite Germany's interests and never shared the nazi ideology.
"In this context, we deem it necessary to point out once again to the authors of the 'liberation war' myth and to the entire Estonian public that alleged 'liberators' were taking part in aggressive warfare on the side of the enemies of the countries who were the first to sign the United Nations Charter.
"It is alleged that units who were not sharing the nazi ideology and were not fighting for nazi Germany's interests could be tolerated in the aggressive German war machine. Any reasonable historian would find that assumption disputable, to say the least.
"Speakers at the ceremony were also referring to Waffen SS legionaries' contribution to the revival of democracy. Whoever is well-versed in Estonian history and sees to the core of the regime that existed in that country after 1934 will find those references bizarre.
"No wonder, those and similar statements enabled certain [contemporary] Estonian political activists to go as far as to make strong calls to force Moscow into a reappraisal of the history of that time and the results of World War II. Their efforts are pointless," stress ministerial PR.
