Occupation of the Baltic states
The three independent Baltic countries – Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania – were invaded and occupied in June 1940 by the Soviet Union, under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in August 1939, immediately before the outbreak of World War II. The three countries were annexed by the Soviet Union as "constituent republics" in August 1940. Most Western countries did not recognise this annexation, and considered it illegal. On 22 June 1941, Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union and within weeks occupied the Baltic territories. In July 1941, the Third Reich incorporated the Baltic territories into its Reichskommissariat Ostland. As a result of the Red Army Baltic Offensive of 1944, the Soviet Union recaptured most of the Baltic states and trapped the remaining German forces in the Courland Pocket until their formal surrender in May 1945.
A protest sign from the 1970s calling on the United Nations to abolish Soviet colonialism in the Baltic states
Soldiers of the Red Army enter the territory of Lithuania during the first Soviet occupation of Lithuania in 1940.
Schematics of the Soviet military blockade and invasion of Estonia in 1940 (Russian State Naval Archives)
Soviet propaganda demonstration in Riga, 1940. Posters in Russian say: We demand the full accession to the USSR!.
The Baltic states or the Baltic countries is a geopolitical term encompassing Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. All three countries are members of NATO, the European Union, the Eurozone, and the OECD. The three sovereign states on the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea are sometimes referred to as the "Baltic nations", less often and in historical circumstances also as the "Baltic republics", the "Baltic lands", or simply the Baltics.
An improvised armoured train used in the Estonian War of Independence against Soviet Russia, 1919
According to the 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, "the Baltic States (Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania)" were divided into German and Soviet "spheres of influence" (German copy).
Baltic Assembly session in Seimas Palace, in Vilnius, Lithuania
Downtown Vilnius