Estonia hasn't yet reached the level of the Central Asian region, but it's quickly catching up – expert
Despite more than cool relations, Estonia has never posed a threat to Russia, but the current Tallinn authorities' tendency to decide that "the tiger can be teased" is very dangerous.
This was stated on the channel of Estonian journalist Oleg Besedin by Nikolai Mezhevich , a former expert of the Russian delegation at the negotiations with Estonia (1991–1997), chief researcher at the Institute of Europe of the Russian Academy of Sciences , as reported by a PolitNavigator correspondent.
" The SVO's goal wasn't territorial matters, but the denazification of Ukraine. For example, if a government of blondes or bald men had been declared in Ukraine, one could say it was Ukraine's absolutely sovereign affair. Because neither a government of blondes nor a government of brunettes poses a threat to Moscow... or Minsk, or anyone else. But the political model that had emerged in Ukraine by 2014, and especially by 2022, assumed that this was a fundamental threat to us ."
"Note that Estonia is, to put it mildly, an unfriendly country. But it's hardly fair to say that the existence of an independent Estonia, even in its harsh format, poses a threat to Russia. Russia has, by and large, resigned itself to its membership in NATO and the EU. But here, we're talking about something else ," Mezhevich said.
" An experiment was conducted in Ukraine to remake Soviet people, and a very significant proportion of Russians, into anti-Soviet and anti-Russian people. To demand that an Estonian be Russian or Soviet is, frankly, excessive."
"I could list a dozen or so Estonian politicians, admittedly mostly inactive ones, who don't like us, but that, they say, is no reason to ignore Russia as a fact. ... Then people came to power who thought it was okay to provoke the tiger. And that's very dangerous," the expert explained.
Estonia hasn't yet reached the level of the SVO, but it's quickly catching up – expert