Russia on Wednesday officially ended a half-century of military presence in former East Germany and the Baltics, the last European bastions for former Red Army forces of the Cold War era.
Gen. Matvei Burlakov, commander of the West Group, a force that once numbered more than half a million, surrendered his command to Russian President Boris Yeltsin on a cobblestone square in front of the opulent Schauspielhaus theater.Standing before Yeltsin and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, Burlakov cocked his arm in salute and announced that the West Group had completed its final mission.
Yeltsin had special praise for more than 20,000 Soviet soldiers who died capturing Berlin during the closing days of World War II. It was the Russians, not the Western Allies, who captured Berlin.
"The poisonous roots of an unparalleled evil were ripped out here in Berlin, and the ashes of Hitler's monstrous plans were thrown into the wind," Yeltsin said.
"We bow in respect before the millions of your countrymen who lost their lives in this dreadful war," Kohl told Yeltsin.
But Kohl said Russia must never forget the 1948-49 Soviet blockade of Berlin, the Berlin Wall and other heinous Cold War episodes.
"We should not try to erase these events from our memories or to set them against each other," Kohl said.
The remnants of a Soviet occupation force that moved into the Baltics in 1940 also pulled out Wednesday from Latvia and Estonia, the Russian Defense Ministry said. Russia completed its withdrawal from Lithuania last year.
Yeltsin's presence drew attention away from troops leaving the Baltics and onto those troops leaving eastern Germany.
The troops have been leaving over the past four years under a treaty that enabled East Germany and West Germany to reunite in 1990, and the troops now number fewer than 3,000.
Although the West Group was formally dissolved Wednesday, some of its soldiers will remain for a few weeks to oversee closing down the bases.
The sendoff was less than what Yeltsin had hoped for.
Germany turned down Yeltsin's request that Russian troops be included in ceremonies for troops from the United States, Britain and France - the three other World War II Allied victors - that are leaving Berlin.
Since Soviet troops in eastern Europe were unwanted occupiers and the Western allies in western Europe were not, it did not seem proper to allow the Russians full participation, German officials said.
*****
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Russian Embassy to become a hotel
Farewell, Cold War. Hello, health club.
Russia has leased most of its embassy in Georgetown, Guyana, a sprawling oceanside relic of the days of U.S.-Soviet confrontation, to a businessman who will convert it into a hotel, bar, restaurant and private apartments.
It will soon house a health club, a banquet hall and a 140-seat auditorium, Russian Ambassador Mikhail Sobolev and local hotelier Nafis Khan told The Associated Press on Tuesday.
The 10-year deal, the first of its kind, is part of a worldwide plan by Moscow to cut its diplomatic costs, the ambassador said in an interview, noting that the embassy in neighboring Suriname was closed in 1992 for financial reasons.
Khan said the end of the Soviet Union brought a reduction in the embassy staff in Guyana from 35 families to six, allowing him to lease 16 apartments and rebuild other areas for the auditorium, bar and restaurant.