Next week’s Nato summit in the Latvian capital of Riga, the first to be held on the territory of the former Soviet Union, will remove “the very last traces of the Iron ­Curtain” from the region, according to Vaira Vike-Freiburga, the Latvian ­president.

“It’s a very visible way of stamping on to people’s minds, both in Latvia and elsewhere, this change in the map of Europe, this change in the map of the world,” Mrs Vike-Freiburga said in an interview with the Financial Times on Wednesday.