Estonia belonged to Sweden before Russia in WWI. (And before that it belonged to .... and before that ... and on and on....)
Trace the various European national borders back in history and they overlap repeatedly. It's a mess. The seeds of future wars are sown in past/current war(s), as the adage goes. Liberating ethnically similar peoples and "reclaiming territory" were the M.O. of many of the prime belligerents in WWII.
-B.
Chris Doss wrote:
"If you notice, these were all recoveries of territories Russia lost after WWI."
B. wrote:
"Additionally, the 'Warlords' 2 x DVD set's 1st episode, 'Hitler vs. Stalin, goes into much detail about the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact (or the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact) as well as Russia's land grabs in Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Finland, Poland, Bessarabia, & Bukovina (in Romania), all of which happened before the Germans attacked the USSR. It doesn't flatter either side very much."