Keila’s decision reanimated Kremlin minded individuals and groups in Estonia

On November 26, Keila City Council decided that next year the first class of Keila Elementary School would no longer admit children with Russian as their language of instruction and that the school would be merged with Keila primary school.

The opportunity to make this decision gave a well-known NGO to Propastop’s readers; Russian School in Estonia the opportunity to become active, which it did.

The day before the decision, on November 25, a call up was made on Social Media to organize a picket in front of Keila’s City Hall to protect Russian-language education. The call up was made on a World War II propaganda poster where a SS uniformed soldier is attacking a childbearing mother. The soldier has a blue-black-white coat of arms on his sleeve. The Mayor of Keila, Enno Fels has appealed to the police to deal with the poster.

The decision of the Keila City Government provided an opportunity for individuals involved in the Kremlin’s influence activities and their NGO’s to come forward onto the scene once again.

Alisa Bindsova, Mstislav Rusakov, Oleg Nazmutdinov and many others spoke about the Keila Elementary School topic on Sputnik, Baltnews and well as Social Media networks. Famous protest organizers, Sergei Tschaulin and Aleksei Esakov were at the Keila City Council meeting.

The picket line held in front of the City Hall organized by Tšaulin and Esakov had familiar protest placards demanding „Stop the occupation of Russian schools in Estonia!“, „Stop the genocide of Russian schools!“ The picket line also had underage children holding placards.

The calls for action and the coverage in Social Media made it possible once again to convince the various Kremlin-related groups and webpages to co-work against Estonia. For example, it was possible to find information about the attending picket from these groups; Русский Дискуссионный клуб, Наш Ласнамяэ/Meie Lasnamäe, Русскоязычная Эстония, Новости Эстонии, Таллиннцы, Aera Vulgaris, Выборы в Эстонии, Новый Маарду, Голос Русской Балтии. Эстония, Латвия, Литва, Группа «Tribuna.ee», as well as for example the Lithuanian Baltnews managed group Прибалтика по-русски: Литва, Латвия, Эстония.

The above-mentioned Facebook groups and their inter-relationships can be read in an earlier Propastop posting.

To date, only TASS and some smaller publications have covered the protest action in the Russian media.

Photo: screenshot from Facebook