Original sentence: Russia maintains that Soviet forces liberated the Estonian SSR from Nazi occupation.Russian historians, however, deny that the Baltic republics were illegally annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940.The Foreign Ministry said, "The assertions about [the] 'occupation' by the Soviet Union and the related claims ignore all legal, historical and political realities, and are therefore utterly groundless.They maintain that the USSR was not in a state of war and was not waging any combat activities on the territory of the three Baltic states, therefore there can be no talk about 'occupation'.They state that the Soviet troops had entered the Baltics in 1940 following the agreements and with the consent of the then governments of the Baltic republics, regardless of how their actions can be interpreted today.This position is also supported by the Russian government