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MOSCOW - Estonia is in the grip of its worst crisis since it won independence from the Soviet Union, after a second night of bloody ethnic rioting shook the capital.
President Vladimir Putin expressed "most serious concern" about the violence in Tallinn after the Estonian Government's decision to remove a Soviet war memorial, the Kremlin said.
Police and ethnic Russians in the tiny Baltic state clashed, with at least 600 people arrested and 96 injured. As some people waved Russian flags, demonstrators threw bottles and stones. They retreated as officers advanced on the crowd, fired tear gas and began making arrests.
The violent protests exploded after the removal of the Bronze Soldier in Tallinn's Freedom Square, a memorial to the Soviet soldiers who liberated Estonia from the Nazis in 1944.
Ethnic Russians are also angry that the Government wants to exhume the bodies of 14 Soviet soldiers believed to be buried in a grave beside the memorial and rebury them in a military cemetery. The Government argues that the location near a busy intersection is not a proper resting place for the bodies.
About 300,000 of Estonia's 1.3 million inhabitants are ethnic Russians. They have persistently complained of discrimination.
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