Estonia’s Prime Minister paid his respects for the first time today before a monument to the Red Army that had occupied his country for half a century.

But the gesture by Andrus Ansip did little to heal bitter divisions over the Bronze Soldier, which have triggered Estonia’s worst rioting since independence in 1991 and plunged relations with Russia into crisis.

Mr Ansip bowed his head as flowers were laid at the foot of the Bronze Soldier at a military cemetery in the capital Tallinn. It was the first time that Estonia had honoured the Red Army officially as it sought to re-cast the meaning of the statue during a day of events to commemorate victims of World War II.

Russia’s ambassador, Nikolai Uspensky, refused to join other diplomats at the cermemony. He said that Russia would honour its war dead tomorrow, which is traditionally marked in Moscow as Victory Day.

Most Estonians regard the Bronze Soldier as a symbol of 50 years of occupation by the Soviet Union. But Estonia’s Russian minority, who make up a quarter of its 1.3 million people, consider it a memorial to the millions who died to defeat Nazi Germany.

They reacted violently 9 days ago when the government moved the statue to the cemetery from a square in central Tallinn where it had stood since 1947.

Mr Ansip and Defence Minister Jaak Aaviksoo also attended ceremonies at a Holocaust memorial outside Tallinn and at a cemetery commemorating soldiers who had died in Estonia fighting for the Nazis and the Soviet Union.

The government said that the ceremonies were intended to honour the victims of the war and those who had died helping to defeat fascism in Europe. But in a sign of the continued tensions, President Toomas Hendrick Ilves and Mr Ansip issued a statement urging Estonians to maintain “dignity towards oneself and others”.

“The anniversary of the end of World War II makes us all think about a victory over a certain totalitarian regime,” they said. “For many, the end of World War II means the victory of freedom over tyranny, and for many it means that one violent regime was replaced by another.” The Kremlin flatly rejects any view of the Red Army as an occupier, insisting that the Soviet Union liberated Europe from fascism at a cost of 26 million lives. Russia revised the number of Soviet soldiers killed in the Second World War to 8.86 million yesterday, up 200,000 on its previous estimate in 1993.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused the European Union and NATO this week of conniving in attempts to rewrite history. Estonia’s Foreign Minister said in an interview with The Times, however, that its conflict with Russia was an important test for the two organisations.

Urmas Paet accused the Kremlin of seeking confrontation with Europe and of orchestrating last month’s violence in Estonia, saying that it was still not reconciled to the loss of its former Soviet satellites.

“Russia is trying to test where the limits are and how far they can really go to provoke a reaction from the EU and NATO,” Mr Paet said.

“Russia wants to see a weak EU and to do business with separate member states. So they would like to see tensions and misunderstandings within the EU over new members like Estonia.” Estonia sent a note to the Russian embassy yesterday confirming that the remains of 12 bodies found at the statue’s former location were probably Soviet soldiers. It asked for help in tracing relatives of soldiers believed to lie there so that DNA tests could be conducted to identify them before a reburial next month.

Police maintained a heavy presence in Tallinn to prevent any further violence. Estonia’s Russian community remains resentful.

Nikolai Karayev, a journalist for the Russian-language newspaper Day by Day, said: “When the authorities removed the statue it was a sign that they don’t respect our rights to sacred things any more. They insulted us and many feel angry.

“Everyone was shocked by the riots and now we have a situation where the Estonians are afraid of us and the Russians are angry at them. But mostly Russians feel betrayed by the authorities.”

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