U.S. Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo released the following message on July 22.
The Welles Declaration is a proud moment in the history of U.S. foreign policy and friendship with the peoples of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Eighty years ago, the United States pointedly refused to recognize the illegal incorporation of the Baltic states into the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union’s criminal act was accomplished through the signing of secret protocols to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with Nazi Germany in August 1939. Through decades of Soviet occupation and attempts at forced assimilation, the United States never ceased to recognize the sovereignty of the three Baltic states. Throughout those dark days, the peoples of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania never lost hope that the doors of the Soviet “prison of nations” would one day open; nor did the United States.