The future was sealed when on 9 October 1944, Churchill met with Stalin in Moscow and penciled out the post-war partition of Europe. Churchill recounts: "At length I said, 'Might it not be thought rather cynical if it seemed that we had disposed of these issues, so fateful to millions of people, in such an offhand manner? Let us burn the paper.' — 'No, you keep it,' said Stalin." The February 1945 Yalta Conference, widely regarded as determining the future of Europe, invoked the Atlantic Charter and the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live, however did not directly address the issue of the Baltic states, paving the path to unopposed Soviet hegemony over post-war Eastern Europe.