Rasmussen wants clarification on absurd comments

VILNIUS - During his visit to Lithuania on Sept. 5, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said that the recent statements about the possible occupation of the Baltic States by Russia, made by some Russian politicians after Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia expressing support for military intervention in Syria, deserve serious response, reports LETA. According to Rasmussen, the Russian government should also express its position on this issue.

“Actually, it would be easy to reject such statements as absurd; however, I believe that they should receive serious response since they are completely unacceptable,” said Rasmussen at the Lithuanian parliament on Friday.
Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the populist extremist leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, has said that the Baltic countries “will be occupied or destroyed since they have dared to support the intervention of the Western countries in Syria.”

Before that, Institute of CIS States political scientist Mikhail Alexandrov wrote on his online blog that if the West intervened in Syria without the United Nations Security Council’s consent, “Russia should move its troops into the Baltic countries.” Alexandrov also wrote that half of the people in Latvia and Estonia would greet Russian tanks with flowers, just like, he said, they did in 1940.

Alexandrov, after decades of denial by Russia that it occupied the Baltic States, on his blog advocating Russia’s re-occupation of the Baltics, added that “it does not matter if a few natives finish dead under the tanks.”

The world is, nonetheless, used to hearing such mindless drivel from Russian figures.
Rasmussen also said that he “would like to hear the Russian government say that it does not approve of such statements.”