Waiting for the Russian Attack in Tallinn

After Putin called for mobilisation, Estonia launched exercises for reservists. When you are in Tallinn, you immediately realise that it is more than just solidarity with Ukraine, it is a bond.

Published in German in: FAS, 02.10.2022

All texts in English

Tallin in September 2022, Ukrainian flags are everywhere. Picture: © Nikolai Klimeniouk:

The Estonian capital Tallinn is more than 1500 kilometres away from the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine, but the front feels close. Fighter jets fly low over the airport. Military vehicles are on the move. After Putin declared mobilisation, Estonia started exercises for reservists. Ukrainian flags are everywhere: on house fronts, in shop windows, right at the airfield on a pole where the EU flag used to fly. You notice immediately: it's more than just solidarity, it's a bond.

The border between Estonia and Russia is 336 kilometres long, but its course is not precisely defined. Russia does not want to recognise the Peace Treaty of Tartu, which ended Estonia's war of independence against Soviet Russia in 1920 and with it Russia's two-hundred-year rule over the Baltic country. One automatically wants to write "the small Baltic country", yet Estonia is larger than the Netherlands. Independence did not last long. In 1939, Hitler and Stalin divided Central Europe between themselves (this arrangement is known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact), and the Soviet Union annexed Estonia the following year.

The Estonians themselves like to speak of their "little country", after all, only 1.3 million people live there. Just under a quarter of them are Russian; about a third of them, according to surveys, believe Russian propaganda more than Estonian media. Since the beginning of the Russian invasion, almost 300,000 Russian citizens have crossed the Estonian border - no wonder Estonian authorities see this as a major security risk. And not only authorities.

I came to Estonia at the invitation of the Federal Agency for Civic Education for a seminar on Russian disinformation and historical manipulation, which they organised together with the think tank ICDS (International Centre for Defence and Security). Among the participants were many experts from the Baltic States and Poland, and all seemed to agree: the danger to their countries is acute; tens of thousands of Russians fleeing mobilisation - significantly more than protested against the war - are part of this threat.

The Polish historian and journalist Jarosław Kuisz put it in a nutshell. A new coalition is being formed, which he called the post-Molotov-Ribbentrop Alliance, comprising the three Baltic countries and Ukraine, as well as Finland and Poland. There, Kuisz wrote in the "New York Times" back in March, the current war is perceived not as an event, but as a process that began a long time ago and would not end when the fighting stops. Part of it, he argues, has already been the Russian incursions into Chechnya and Georgia. The West thinks it has to prevent World War 3, for Central Europe the war has been in full swing for a long time and they themselves are the next target.

So we sat in our hotel on the Baltic coast and waited for a blackout. Russia announced a "practice disconnection" of its exclave Kaliningrad from the common power grid, which could lead to a complete blackout in the Baltic States. Nothing happened this time, but the danger seemed real. In 2007, Estonia, already one of the most digitised countries in the world, was the victim of a cyber-attack that paralysed it for several weeks - after the bronze figure of the Soviet soldier was moved from Tallinn city centre to a military cemetery. Since then, most visible reminders of the Soviet Union have disappeared in Estonia. Recently, the Soviet T-34 tank was removed from the border town of Narva - whereupon Russia placed the same tank on its side.

Several Soviet monuments ended up in the courtyard of the History Museum in Tallinn, where, next to the Stalin figure, one finds the headless statue of the Russian sailor Evgeny Nikonov, who was allegedly brutally murdered by the Nazis and whose name was borne by streets and schools in Estonia and Russia. At some point, as the story goes in Estonia, the pioneers from one of these schools wanted to visit the hero's relatives in his home village - and found him there himself, unsuspecting of his martyrdom. Something similar happened with many Soviet war myths. Nevertheless, two years ago the Russian embassy commemorated Nikonov's heroic death, but no longer blamed the Nazis, but Estonian collaborators.

Today, the embassy in Tallinn's Old Town looks neglected. Solidarity posters for Ukraine and nasty caricatures about Russia hang on the barrier. They also attack the white-blue-white flag of the Russian anti-war movement, freed from the bloody red of the official tricolour. For example like this: The red is smeared all over, the English text reads: "You will never be able to wash off our blood". This could mean Ukrainian, Estonian, Chechen or Georgian blood. Seen from Tallinn, Russia will always be a danger as long as it exists, with or without Putin.