Reports
Estonia Weekly: Discrimination of Russian Speakers and Ukraine
This week primarily maintained the topics of economic situation, national language policy in Estonian schools and war in Ukraine. Also, the matters of European Union affairs are rather important, this week focusing on the question of veto rights for the EU member countries
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Estonia Weekly: Distrust in the Government
This week posts over the social media and web-based news outlets were mainly focusing on the issue of Russian language status, economic issues, places of memory for the Soviet soldiers, as well as the “standard” Kremlin propaganda messages regarding the Estonian membership in NATO and European Union. Two “arguments” would highlight the week – that Estonian expenditures towards the national defense will destroy the production and manufacturing industry in Estonia, and that Estonian government would reinstate its independence and serve its citizens best, if Estonia would withdraw from EU and NATO and resume full scale economic ties with Russia. The main narratives of this week are as follows: that Estonian government intentionally is destroying production and industry in Estonia; the national policy of Estonia is discriminating Russian language; that Estonian government makes fun of the memory of Soviet soldiers who died in World War II by destroying their memorials; that war in Ukraine is a pretext to discriminate Russian language in Estonian schools for Russian speaking children; That while Estonia is a member of NATO and EU and until economic ties with Russia are restored, there is no independent Estonian government, that would care about interests of Estonian people.
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Estonia Weekly: Pro-Russia Sentiments, NATO Skepticism, and Free Speech Concerns
Issues of trade, NATO, Russian language, Estonian language policy, municipal politics and freedom of speech were covered this week in Estonian social media channels and websites. The main narratives were related to the importance of securing good trade relations with Russia, which is a key to Estonian business success. Also, the reliability of NATO was questioned in the narrative over the upcoming exercises. Reforms in Estonian education policy sparked comments on how it will relate to Russian language use in Estonia, while recent legislation that would prevent hate speech was marked as an end of the freedom of speech in Estonia.
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