Ilves calls rumor over president's personal life "a provocation"

  • 2006-07-06
  • By TBT staff
Toomas Hendrik Ilves, deputy chairman of the foreign affairs committee in the European Parliament, has come to President Arnold Ruutel's defense, declaring that the recently published attack against his private life was a provocation.

Ilves believes that the slander, which was published in the SL Ohtuleht on July 5, was a "behind the border" attempt to damage Estonia's credibility, Ilves' adviser Olari Koppel told the Baltic News Service.

"There is no justification to the greed by which some Estonian publications grabbed the anonymous information published in Russia. Apparently, one of the aims of the provocation was to legitimize slander in the press of a European Union member country," Ilves said.

He said papers of the European cultural space only published checked information based on sources, while politicians debated each other by their views and did not organize dirty anti-personal attacks.

"Unfortunately there are political parties also in Estonia, including the so-called presidential party, that attack their opponents by invented circumstances. The homeland of such dirty tricks and way of thinking lies to the east of us, which is expressively proven by recent case of Izvestiya and an Internet site of no clear origin," Ilves said.

On July 5, the SL Ohtuleht wrote about President Arnold Ruutel's alleged extramarital relations, referencing the Moscow daily Izvestiya.

Ruutel immediately declared the articles slanderous, and said, if it comes down to it, he would bring the issue to court. The information published, he asserted, is neither true nor accurate.

"The accusations in the Izvestiya and SL Ohtuleht articles about my extramarital relations and an illegitimate child lack any basis of truth. If necessary, I am prepared to defend my dignity in court," the president said.
Referring to the Russian paper Izvestiya, SL Ohtuleht wrote that President Arnold Ruutel had an illegitimate child living in St. Petersburg.

Alexander Artyukhin, author of the Izvestiya article, said his source for the story was the St. Petersburg State University Web site. "There is a forum in which students speak about how they entered the university and who they are studying with. It states that Ruutel's son studies with Putin's daughter Katya in the Oriental Studies Faculty," Artyukhin said.
The reporter added that, according to the student forum, Ruutel's illegitimate son was living in an adopted family in St. Petersburg and kept silent about the fact for years.