New attempt: The Kremlin provokes the EP again to punish Estonia

In mid September the Russian propaganda, channel NTV televised in their news program a story based on the analysis of the Directorate-General for Internal Policies of the Union’s General Secretariat of the European Parliament, which reviewed the protection situation of minorities in 11 European member countries.

The incisive analysis morphed the modest news story to that the European Parliament was worried about discrimination of the Russian minority in Estonia. The fact of the analysis opened the door for allegations from various speakers.

The original story that highlighted the analysis appeared in the Russian language channel of Russia Today on September 4. moreover, it was referenced by about ten dozen propaganda news feeds in the coming days.

Different speakers have spoken up about Russian speaking discrimination in the last two weeks due to a relatively marginal analysis.

Because the analysis is not centred on Estonia nor does it makes specific complaints about discrimination against the Russian speaking population, they had to bring out the subject through various special speakers, whose negative tone on Estonian authorities was well known and gives confirmation of the issue.

The allegations have been made in various news channels by the Estonian Centre Party (Keskerkond) member,Vladimir Velman, European Parliament member Yana Toom, Russian (for non profit) school (MTÜ) chairman in Estonia, Alisa Blintsova, teacher Vjatšeslav Tšaika and the chairman of the United leftist party of Estonia Dmitri Suhoroslov.

In itself, the discrimination of the Russian speaking population in the Russian media is nothing new – this is one of their central propaganda speaking points. More noteworthy for the editors of Propastop is more the fact, that in the last month and a half this is another attempt to bind anti-Estonian criticism with the European Union and give the impression that the European Union is worried about the situation in Estonia.

At the end of August, we wrote about a circulating story in the Russian media that spoke of the possibility that Europe could be starting to call out the Baltic nations because of promoting Nazism, right up to punishing them with economic sanctions. In the story Czech politician and European parliament member, Jiří Maštálka intends to present a resolution to the European Parliament that condemns support of Fascism in the Baltic’s and suggests that sanctions be used against these nations. In both stories, the impression is given that the European Parliament is already actively dealing with Estonia although one situation deals with an intent while the other is a 200-page analysis on 11 member countries.  This part of the Kremlin’s strategy of dividing Europe and sow confusion. The fact that the story made to the television news shows the significance of the given propaganda topic.

Photo: screen shot from home page