Mr Ilves, 52, was born in Sweden to parents who had escaped the Soviet occupation of Estonia in 1944 and later moved to the US where he studied for a degree in psychology at Columbia University in New York.

Before moving to Estonia in 1996, after the country gained independence in 1991, Mr Ilves worked for Radio Free Europe in Munich, Germany, and has served as the country's ambassador to the US, Canada and Mexico, and as a member of the Estonian parliament as well as the foreign minister twice.

Fellow Baltic countries Latvia and Lithuania also have leaders who fled Soviet occupation in 1944-45. Many Baltic citizens went to the West rather than live under communism, but maintained contact with their homelands until the collapse of the USSR in 1991.

Latvia's current president Vaira Vike-Freiberga was born in Latvia in 1937, left the country in 1945, and was raised in a displaced-persons camps in Germany and Morocco before moving to Canada in 1954.

She moved permanently back to Estonia in 1998 and was elected president as a non-partisan, compromise candidate in 1999.

Lithuania's current president Valdas Adamkus - the EU's second -oldest president at 79 - was born in Lithuania in 1926 and fought in the resistance during the war of the occupation. He left the country in 1944 and later reached the US.

Mr Adamkus was elected president in 1998, defeated in elections in 2002 and re-elected in 2004 after then-president Rolandas Paksas was removed by parliament.

"It's a response to political corruption and scandals [of the 1990s]. These outsiders are free from that, and bring a fresh transparency and honesty to politics," professor of Baltic politics at Tartu University, Andres Kasekamp, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur.