Moscow - Russia stepped up its criticism of the European Union's stance towards Moscow's conflict with EU member Estonia over the removal of a Russian war memorial from central Tallinn ahead of an EU-Russia summit. "The stance of the European Union in this conflict and in relation to the situation in Estonia is, to say it clearly, hypocritical," Russian President Vladimir Putin's EU advisor Sergei Yastrshembski said in a television interview aired in Moscow late Saturday.
The row over Estonia's removal of a Soviet-era Red Army war memorial from downtown Tallinn would not place the May 17-18 summit in Samara on the River Volga in jeopardy, however, he said.
"They (the EU member states) are interested in stable and enduring relations with Russia," Yastrshembski said.
Other areas of conflict between the EU and Russia are Moscow's ban on the import of Polish meat and the US missile-defence shield in Europe would come up at the summit, a Kremlin spokesman said Sunday.
But it could be said that 90 per cent of the process of rapprochement between Russia and the EU was contructive, the spokesman said.
"We will base the talks on the positive and on a pragmatic approach," the Kremlin official was quoted by Interfax news agency as saying.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose country currently holds the rotating EU presidency, will not be able to launch talks on a new cooperation agreement between Moscow and Brussels as planned.
Russia has made it clear in recent days that it will stick to its firm position on banning the import of Polish meat.
