KillerPicklez said:

I can see where the Russians are coming from, they claim the violence was initiated when the Georgian military launched an attack to re-claim South Ossetia and that they had an obligation to protect Russian citizens in the territory.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7583486.stm

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zouden said:

Is there a distinct state within Estonia whose population has expressed a strong desire to secede? If not, then it's a different situation to the one in the Caucasus.

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Quote:

"There is quite a convincing amount of evidence pointing to Russian government involvement in fanning the flames of violence during the relocation of the monument," Andres Kasekamp, director of the Estonian Foreign Policy Institute, told AFP.

"The hand of the Kremlin is quite clear in the events in Tallinn," he said.

"Russian politicians and the state-owned media had for months been making highly inflammatory statements about Estonia, stirring tensions in the build-up to a conflict," he said.

"We can similarly detect the hand of Moscow... when the pro-Kremlin youth group Nashi blockaded the Estonian Embassy in Moscow and attacked the Estonian ambassador," he said.

The renewed accusations of direct Russian involvement in last month's riots came as Russian President Vladimir Putin, hit out at Estonia and Latvia at European Union-Russia summit talks.

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