RUSSIA angrily denied yesterday that the Soviet Union ever annexed the Baltic states, fuelling a bitter dispute between East and West that is threatening to overshadow Victory Day celebrations in Moscow on Monday.

A senior Kremlin official insisted that the Soviet Union had taken over Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania by mutual agreement rather than force, rejecting calls from some European officials for an apology.

Sergei Yastrzhembsky, the Kremlin’s European affairs chief, said yesterday: “There was no occupation. There were agreements at the time with the legitimately-elected authorities in the Baltic countries.”

But President Bush has sided firmly with the Baltic states in their demand that Russia acknowledge their annexation.

He told Lithuanian state television that he would remind President Putin about the Soviet occupation when they meet in Moscow on Monday. “Yes, of course I’ll remind him of that,” said Mr Bush, who arrives in Latvia today and will meet the three Baltic leaders tomorrow.

Steve Hadley, the National Security Adviser, said that Russia should denounce the secret 1939 pact between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany that preceded the takeover of the Baltic states.

President Vike-Freiberga of Latvia said that recent Russian rhetoric was reminiscent of Stalinist times and thanked Washington for trying to get Moscow to face up to its past.

The dispute between Russia and its Baltic neighbours has simmered for years but now threatens to sour Moscow’s relations with Washington and Brussels on the eve of what was supposed to be an international show of respect for Russia’s war effort.

Russian officials were already fuming over Mr Bush’s decision to visit Latvia and Georgia either side of his Moscow trip as a show of support for young democracies in former Soviet states that have turned their backs on Russia.

Günter Verheugen, the European Commission’s Vice-President, further infuriated the Kremlin this week when he said that Moscow’s relations with Brussels would depend on Russia admitting the illegality of Soviet rule in the Baltics.

Mr Yastrzhembsky said: “I advise those who want to develop constructive relations with Russia to leave the analysis to historians and to experts, and not to bring too many phobias and historical prejudice into current relations between Russia and the European Union.”

Herr Verheugen “does not properly rememember the historical situation on which he is commenting”, Mr Yastrzhembsky said. Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the Danish Prime Minister, also angered Moscow this week by urging Russia to apologise for the Soviet occupation of the Baltic.

Soviet troops entered the Baltic states in 1940 after the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact, which divided much of Eastern Europe into spheres of interest. Germany invaded the Baltic states in 1941 and held them until 1945, when the victorious Red Army returned, placing them under Moscow’s rule until the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

Last year, all three Baltic republics joined the European Union and Nato, which now has fighter jets stationed in Lithuania, to Russia’s dismay.

Since then, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have stepped up their pressure on Russia to recognise the Soviet occupation, and to compensate for the damage done.

Russia, in turn, has protested over the treatment of ethnic Russians in the Baltics, especially in Latvia, which has not granted citizenship to hundreds of thousands of Russians who moved there in Soviet times. Moscow fears that recognising the Soviet occupation of the Baltics could trigger protests from nationalists at home, and further the claims for compensation from former Soviet countries.

“Examining the problem of the Russian occupation of the Baltics at a high level is totally absurd,” said Vyacheslav Nikonov, a political analyst with close links to the Kremlin.

It would “open a Pandora’s Box, and then it would be necessary to recognise the occupation of everyone by everyone”, he said. Moscow accuses the Baltic states of trying to sour the atmosphere for May 9, when 53 world leaders are expected to attend a lavish parade on Red Square.

President Adamkus of Lithuania and President Ruutel of Estonia have turned down an invitation to the celebrations in protest. Ms Vike-Freiberga has said that she will attend the celebrations, but only to remind the world “that at the end of (the) Second World War half of Europe was not liberated”.

Meanwhile, a group of 68 politicians, officials and former ambassadors from 19 mostly European countries have called on those attending the ceremonies to press Moscow on the erosion of democratic and civil liberties.

The signatories used an open letter to say that it was highly ironic and a mockery of the occasion that one of Europe’s most repressive regimes was hosting the celebration of the continent’s liberation.

The letter said: “The venue and hosting of this event are altogether unsuited to the fundamental principles for which that historic victory in the Second World War was achieved.”

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