Well, I wonder if he saw this:
| MOSCOW -- Russian President Vladimir Putin issued New Year's greetings Saturday to a former pro-Soviet partisan convicted in Latvia of killing civilians during World War II.
Vassily Kononov, 80, was convicted last year of war crimes for ordering the killing of nine civilians, including a pregnant woman, in 1944 when Latvia was occupied by Nazi troops. He was a leader of a small band of partisans fighting the Nazis. Kononov was sentenced to 20 months' imprisonment, but was freed because he had served that much time in pretrial detention. Many Russians consider Kononov a legitimate war hero and Moscow criticized the trial as a witch-hunt targeting an ailing, elderly man. Russian-Latvian relations have been tense since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, with Russia expressing strong resentment of Latvia's efforts to spread use of the Latvian language and limit Russian, the mother tongue of about a third of Latvia's people. "You have defended not only your honest name, but historical justice and the honor of your fighting comrades," Putin said in the greetings statement released by the Kremlin. "From my soul I greet you and your loved ones on the coming New Year." Copyright © 2004, The Associated Press |
--------
0 TrackBacks
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: LOOK INTO MY SOUL.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.alexwhalen.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/1752
Subscribe to this blog's feed
Leave a comment