A Soviet war monument at the heart of deadly rioting in Tallinn will be re-erected in a military cemetery yesterday afternoon, the Estonian defense ministry said.
In the coming weeks, a wall will be erected around the statue at its new site, Mikko said.
"The site will be completed by May or June and the statue will look like it did in the city center," he said, stressing that the monument to Red Army soldiers who died in World War II "is intact, in good shape."
The monument will be inaugurated in its new site on Saturday, the defense ministry has said.
The 2.5m statue was removed early on Friday from the site in central Tallinn where it had stood for 60 years after rioters raged through the capital the night before.
One person, a Russian citizen, was killed in the unrest, which erupted anew on Friday night and which authorities here denounced as vandalism having nothing to do with the war monument.
More than 150 people were injured in the two nights of violence and nearly 1,000 have been temporarily detained, many of them minors.
Excavations are under way at the old monument site to determine if any fallen Soviet soldiers are buried there.
Russian lawmakers were due to arrive in Tallinn yesterday for talks aimed at resolving a crisis over the removal of the war memorial.
"The delegation is on its way and a first meeting will be held at parliament with deputy speaker Kristiina Ojuland at 2:15pm," Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Andry Ruumet said.
Meanwhile, Estonia denounced a "psycho-terror" siege at its embassy in Moscow yesterday, where it said dozens of Estonians were trapped by youths protesting the removal.
"The situation around the Estonian embassy in Moscow is psycho-terror," Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves said.
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