Russia Bullies Another Neighbour

As I’ve mentioned on numerous occasions, particularly in this article, Russia’s behaviour under Vladimir Putin has often resembled a vengeful mob boss, employing financial blackmail to get what he wants, breaking legs when things don’t go his way, flat out assassinating problematic people who won’t keep quiet and occasionally indulging in a good old blood bath to remind everyone who’s in control and not to mess about with the Godfather.

Well this time poor old Estonia has copped it good and proper. On 27 April, Estonian authorities moved a statue known as the Bronze Soldier, from a square in the capital Tallinn and relocated it to a military cemetery outside the city. The statue commemorates Soviet troops killed fighting the Nazis during WWII but many Estonians consider it to be an unpleasant reminder of five decades of Soviet occupation.

In response the Kremlin stirred up the ethnic Russian minority in Estonia which led to riots in Tallinn, allowed the Estonian embassy in Moscow to be blockaded by an angry mob and the Estonian Ambassador was physically threatened by pro-Kremlin youth groups at a news conference. Most astonishingly, a concerted campaign of cyber-attacks has been carried out against Estonian websites originating from Russia. These attacks have knocked down government, business and media websites in the country. The Estonian Defence Minister stated that they had tracked the initial attacks to Russian IP addresses and that instructions in Russian had been spread on the web explaining how to jam Estonian websites.

These reprehensible actions illustrate perfectly the ugly character of Russia’s foreign policy. Moscow is behaving like a brutish thug, smacking down anyone who dares displease her. The gangster-style punishments the Kremlin meets out these days need to be addressed and vociferously condemned, with threats of economic consequences if this type of behaviour continues. Sadly, the European’s craven need for Russian gas seems to preclude any such possibility.