Former Estonian President Arnold Rüütel dies at age 96

TALLINN, Estonia — Arnold Rüütel, the last communist leader of Soviet Estonia and the Baltic country’s second president after the restoration of independence, has died. He was 96.

The office of the President of Estonia, Alar Karis, announced on its website that Rüütel had died on Tuesday.

A trained agriculturalist, Rüütel 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, Rüütel 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, Rüütel 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 sizable ethnic Russian minority as part of its Soviet legacy, Rüütel advocated social democratic policies and support for farmers, and in 1994 he helped form the People’s Union, a left-leaning party that took part in several ruling coalitions.

Rüütel 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 reelection for a second five-year term but was defeated by Toomas Hendrik Ilves in 2006.

Rüütel will be buried with full state honors, Estonian public broadcaster ERR reported on Wednesday. It did not give a date for the funeral.