Patriarch Kirill says arrival in Estonia on mourning day was coincidence

Photo: NPA

While Prime Minister Andrus Ansip said on Friday that he considers the arrival of the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, on the day Estonia is remembering victims of Soviet repressions to be very significant and the laying of a wreath at the statue of Linda, a sign of appeasement, the primate of the Russian church said his arrival on that day was a coincidence.

«No-one planned it specially that my first official visit to Estonia started on the day the Estonian people remembered the victims of deportations,» the patriarch said on Friday.

He added that deportations affected almost every Estonian family and that these sorts of crimes caused suffering to millions of people in Estonia, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova and in many other countries. He said he hopes that nothing like this will happen in the future.

During his visit, the patriarch also met with the leader of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Estonia, Archbishop Andres Poder, on Sunday. The two focused on common Christian values and touched upon the historical and cultural ties of the two churches both in past centuries and during the Soviet regime.

The archbishop thanked Patriarch Kirill for the laying of the wreath at the statue of Linda in honor of victims of Soviet deportations.