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The Baltic Governorates, [a] originally the Ostsee Governorates, [b] was a collective name for the administrative units of the Russian Empire set up in the territories of Swedish Estonia, Swedish Livonia (1721) and, afterwards, of the Duchy of Courland and Semigallia (1795).
Russians in the Baltic states is a broadly defined subgroup of the Russian diaspora who self-identify as ethnic Russians, or are citizens of Russia, and live in one of the three independent countries — Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania — primarily the consequences of the USSR's forced population transfers during occupation.
The Baltic states regained de facto independence in 1991 during the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Russia started to withdraw its troops from the Baltics starting with Lithuania in August 1993. However, it was a violent process and Soviet forces killed several Latvians and Lithuanians. [20]
Finally in 1934, the three Baltic states reached the Baltic Entente agreement. [10] In spite of the Vilnius issue, the Baltic states were open to the Polish option. The Warsaw Accord was signed in March 1922 by Finland, Poland, Estonia and Latvia, but the Finnish parliament failed to ratify it. [11]
Territorial changes of the Baltic states refers to the redrawing of borders of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia after 1940. The three republics, formerly autonomous regions within the former Russian Empire and before that of former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and as provinces of the Swedish Empire, gained independence in the aftermath of World War I and the Russian Revolution of 1917.
Contemporary Russian Federation has refused to be bound pre-1940 agreements which the Soviet Union had entered with either Estonia, Latvia, or Lithuania. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia has announced that the distortion of history and allegations of unlawful occupations are the main reasons for the problems in the Baltics–Russia ...
Large numbers of the inhabitants of the Baltic countries fled westwards before the Red Army arrived in 1944. After the war, the Soviets established new borders for the Baltic republics, adding the regions of Vilnius and Klaipėda to Lithuania and transferring 5 percent of Estonian territory and 2 percent of Latvian territory to the Russian SFSR ...
Russia is a member of the G20, the OSCE, and the APEC. Russia also takes a leading role in organisations such as the CIS, [291] the EAEU, [292] the CSTO, [293] the SCO, [294] and BRICS. [295] Russia maintains close relations with neighbouring Belarus, which is a part of the Union State, a supranational confederation of the two states. [296]