Former Estonian president Arnold Rüütel dies at 96

Arnold Ruutel, the last communist leader of Soviet Estonia and the Baltic country’s second president after the restoration of independence, has died at the age of 96.

The office of the President of Estonia, Alar Karis, said on its website that Mr Ruutel died on Tuesday.

A trained agriculturalist, Mr Ruutel was almost 50 when, in 1977, he began serving in high-ranking positions within the communist party of the Soviet republic of Estonia.

In 1983, he was elected chairman of the republic’s supreme council, becoming the highest-ranking communist official in Estonia.

Soon, however, he was using his position to prepare for Estonia’s split from the Soviet Union, which had occupied the tiny European country on the Baltic Sea in 1940.

In November 1988, Mr Ruutel was a key figure in preparing a declaration of independence, with full sovereignty following three years later.

In the newly independent Estonia, which inherited a sizeable ethnic Russian minority as part of its Soviet legacy, he advocated social democratic policies and support for farmers, and in 1994 helped form the People’s Union, a left-leaning party that took part in several ruling coalitions.

Mr Ruutel was elected president in 2001, succeeding the highly popular Lennart Meri and serving the next five years while shepherding the Baltic nation into Nato and the European Union in 2004.

He sought re-election for a second five-year term in 2006 but was defeated by Toomas Hendrik Ilves.

Mr Ruutel will be buried with full state honours, Estonian public broadcaster ERR reported on Wednesday, but it did not give a date for the funeral.