MOSCOW, May 23 (UPI) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin said Monday Russia will not agree to talks with the Baltic states on their territorial claims.
Speaking to journalists from the Russian daily Komsomolskaya Pravda, Putin said the Baltic states could only expect "ears of a dead donkey" -- a Russian expression meaning "nothing" -- from the Kremlin on outstanding border disagreements in the aftermath of the Soviet collapse.
Russia and Latvia planned to sign a border treaty May 10, but Latvia made a declaration Russia should return a small region known as Pytalovo. The Kremlin disputes this.
Russia and the former Soviet Baltic republics of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia -- now members of the European Union and NATO -- have differed over the meaning of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany 60 years ago.
They disagree whether the Baltic states were forcibly occupied by the Soviet Union for nearly 50 years before independence in 1991.
