The Baltic Times, February 25, 2011VILNIUS - Former USSR leader Mikhail Gorbachev has hotly denied allegations in recently declassified Swedish documents which claim that he asked for billions of rubles in exchange for Lithuania's freedom.
"This is not serious. This is an extremely free interpretation of the events that took place when Lithuania decided to secede from the USSR. There was no bargaining,” Gorbachev told Interfax news agency.
The documents alleged that Gorbachev asked for 21 billion roubles in exchange for the country's independence in March of 1990. He also reportedly asked that the port city of Klaipeda be absorbed into the Kaliningrad region. No deal was reached and the country achieved it's independence ahead of the collapse of the USSR the following year.
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