Estonian social crisis worsening
By Lucas Leiroz | August 8, 2023
Estonia is in serious trouble due to its irrational stance in the current NATO proxy conflict with Russia. Simultaneously focused on meeting Ukrainian humanitarian demands and the war plans of the Atlantic alliance, the Estonian government virtually excludes its own people from national priorities, which resulted in the aggravation of the internal crisis. Uncontrolled immigration, deindustrialization, economic instability and rising living costs are some of the problems that currently affect the country – and that will continue to do so if the government does not take a sovereign attitude.
Committed to helping solve the Ukrainian humanitarian issue, Estonia has been receiving thousands of refugees every day. Last year, the country received more than 115,000 Ukrainians – 62,000 of them planning to stay there permanently. This year, it is estimated that 300 to 400 Ukrainians are applying for Estonian asylum every week. Not all migrants are really in need of humanitarian aid due to the impact of the conflict. Many of the Ukrainian citizens in Estonia are men of military age who should be on the battlefield according to Kiev’s law, but who fled the country to escape the war.
Despite Kiev’s forced recruitment system being dictatorial and unacceptable, Estonia has no humanitarian obligation to receive people who are simply fleeing their military duties. These refugees get help from the Estonian government, and their stay in the country is subsidized by local taxpayers. So, it would be legitimate for Tallinn to have stricter guidelines on who to welcome into its territory – but it does not. In practice, any Ukrainian can enter the country, and the government remains silent, given its irrationally “humanitarian” stance, which prioritizes foreign citizens over nationals.
The Estonian state’s efforts to receive these refugees have been extremely expensive. In the first quarter of 2023 alone, Estonia spent more than 25 million euros on costs related to Ukrainian migrants. These expenses include benefits such as special protection by the Ministry of Interior’s forces, as well as Estonian language lessons provided by the Ministry of Culture.
Obviously, to finance all this, the government needs to reduce investments in other sectors. Unconcerned with the welfare of its own population and prioritizing foreign citizens, Estonia has progressively reduced its spending in the social sphere, which brings serious problems to the domestic situation. The cost of living in the country has been rising, and in 2022 an inflation rate of 19.4% was calculated. As a result, just as thousands of Ukrainians are entering Estonia, thousands of Estonians are migrating to other European countries in search of better living conditions.
In addition to the lack of control over migration, another factor contributing to Estonia’s social crisis is the country’s increasing militarization, both to meet NATO’s demands and to send assistance to Kiev. More than 1% of Estonian GDP is currently being sent in military aid to the Kiev regime, while another 3% is invested in internal militarization to meet the NATO-imposed defense spending goal. So, more money is invested in waging war than in trying to solve social problems, which obviously results in a crisis.
Furthermore, it is necessary to remember that, in the enthusiasm to meet the military interests of NATO and Kiev, Estonia has also generated many problems for its population with the expansion of training camps, affecting local agriculture. Alleging the need for improvements in its defense capacity, Estonia created the Nursipalu Training Area last year and is now trying to expand it. The main problem is that the testing area is located in an agricultural production zone, affecting the regional economy. The Estonian government has not offered local landowners sufficient money or new properties to compensate for the loss of territory from military expansion, thus discouraging agricultural production to favor the interests of NATO.
As we can see, unlimited cooperation with NATO and its proxy neo-Nazi regime has only harmed Estonia and contributed to the emergence of internal problems. In addition to migration and unnecessary militarization, there is also the issue of sanctions. The country has had many problems with decreasing cooperation with Russia in infrastructure. There was a drastic drop in cross-border rail transport, preventing Estonian industrial production from reaching the foreign market. This mainly affected the wood sector in the Võru region and metallurgical production in Põlva, which are strategically relevant points of the national economy.
In fact, all this shows how anti-strategic it is to follow NATO’s guidelines and adopt a policy of support to Kiev. Estonia is entering a serious domestic crisis just because it chose to accept the orders of the Atlantic alliance and engage in anti-Russian war plans. The best way to reverse this scenario and avoid national collapse is to take a sovereign attitude.
Lucas Leiroz, journalist, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, geopolitical consultant.
Neighboring countries ready to pay Zelensky to stop conflict – Seymour Hersh
RT | May 17, 2023
Poland is leading a group of European nations that are secretly urging Vladimir Zelensky to find a way to settle the conflict with Russia, veteran journalist Seymour Hersh has reported, citing a “knowledgeable” American official.
According to US intelligence, other EU countries that want to see an end to the fighting include Hungary, Germany, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, Hersh wrote in an article published on his Substack page on Wednesday.
“Hungary is a big player in this and so are Poland and Germany, and they are working to get Zelensky to come around,” the unnamed official claimed. Those countries have made it clear that “Zelensky can keep what he’s got if he works up a peace deal even if he’s got to be paid off, if it’s the only way to get a deal.”
By “keep what he’s got,” the source was referring to the Ukrainian president’s villa in Italy and interests in an offshore bank, Hersh clarified.
However, Zelensky has so far rejected the proposal, while other major European players – France and the UK – “are too beholden” to the Biden administration, which is continuing to back the Ukrainian leader, the official said.
One of the main reasons why Poland and the others want the conflict to end is because the burden of accommodating Ukrainian refugees has become too much for them, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist wrote.
The problem for those countries “is how to get the US to stop supporting Zelensky,” Hersh’s source suggested.
He claimed that US intelligence is well aware that “Ukraine is running out of money and… that the next four or months are critical. And Eastern Europeans are talking about a deal.”
However, he added that “it’s not clear to the intelligence community what the president and his foreign policy aides in the White House know of the reality.”
The US is “still training Ukrainians how to fly our F-16s that will be shot down by Russia as soon as they get into the war zone. The mainstream press is dedicated to Biden and the war, and Biden is still talking about the Great Satan in Moscow while the Russian economy is doing great,” the official explained.
Russia has repeatedly stated that it’s ready to resolve the conflict at the negotiating table. However, it did not receive any proposals from Ukraine and its Western backers that it could consider reasonable.
Zelensky has been promoting his ten-point peace plan, which calls for Russian forces to withdraw to borders claimed by Ukraine, to pay reparations, and to submit to war-crime tribunals.
Moscow has rejected the plan as “unacceptable,” saying it ignores the reality on the ground and is actually a sign of Kiev’s unwillingness to solve the crisis through diplomatic means.
Estonia cracks down on Russian media
RT | April 5, 2023
Estonia has blocked access to 53 websites that were used to watch banned Russian TV channels, the Baltic country’s Consumer Protection and Technical Regulatory Authority (TTJA) said on Wednesday.
The regulator added that the crackdown was conducted in accordance with the EU sanctions on Russian media.
TTJA Director General Kristi Talving cited a poll commissioned by the Estonian government, which found that the trust of Russian channels has fallen from 40% to 18%. “Based on these numbers, we can say that the work to protect the Estonian information space has been effective,” Talving said.
Nearly 40% of people living in Estonia speak Russian, according to the official census. The country has had a sizable Russian minority from the time that it was part of the Soviet Union.
The EU banned the broadcasting of content from multiple Russian news organizations, including RT, in response to Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine, which was launched in February 2022. The EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, accused the news outlets of spreading disinformation.
Estonia separately banned six Russian TV channels in February 2022. The next month, the TTJA blacklisted seven outlets, including Channel One and news agency TASS.
The Russian Foreign Ministry has described the ban on the country’s news organizations in the EU as an act of censorship aimed at “purging the information space of the presence of any media that is an alternative to Western [media].”
Tony Blair launches new push for biometric digital ID for all citizens
By Ken Macon | Reclaim The Net | February 22, 2023
Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair is again promoting a controversial plan to give every British citizen a digital ID. This would entail the utilization of new biometric technology to store a person’s passport, driving license, tax records, qualifications, and their right to work status.
Sir Tony had previously attempted to introduce ID cards during his time as Prime Minister.
Tony Blair and former Conservative lawmaker William Hague have stated that a major transformation of the government with regards to technology is necessary in order to keep up with the ever-changing world.
However, there was backlash from their demands with Sir Jake Berry calling it a “creepy state plan to track you from the cradle to the grave.”
Blair and Hague revealed their plot in an article for The Times, in which they said “politics must change radically because the world is changing radically.
“We are living through a 21st-century technology revolution as huge in its implications as the 19th-century industrial revolution.”
The duo alleged that current politicians were “in danger of conducting a 20th-century fight at the margins of tax and spending policy when the issue is how we harness this new revolution to reimagine the state and public services.”
The duo demand digital IDs for every citizen – they also called for “a national health infrastructure that uses data to improve care and keep costs down, and sovereign AI systems backed by supercomputing capabilities.”
In an interview with BBC Radio 4 Blair highlighted how countries “as small as Estonia and as large as India’ are moving towards digital IDs.
“If you look at the biometric technology that allows you to do digital ID today, it can overcome many of these problems,’ Blair said.
Big Brother Watch condemned Blair for pushing for a digital identity system.
Big Brother Watch director Silkie Carlo said: “Sir Tony and Lord Hague are absolutely right about the need for the UK to take leadership in technological innovation, but this means protecting people’s rights and privacy, not reviving failed proposals for an intrusive mass digital identity system and a database state.”
Carlo added: “A sprawling digital identity system of the type described by Sir Tony and Lord Hague is utterly retrograde and would be one of the biggest assaults on privacy ever seen in the UK. The public has consistently opposed mandatory ID systems and there is absolutely nothing to suggest the public would want or support such a digital ID system now.”
Blair recently called for global organizations such as the World Trade Organization (WTO) and World Economic Forum (WEF) to push national governments to introduce “digital infrastructure” that monitors who has been vaccinated and who hasn’t.
Plan to blockade Russian shipping in Baltic Sea breaks international law and could provoke war
By Ahmed Adel | January 31, 2023
Western intentions to arm Estonia with the most modern types of conventional weapons which can target Saint Petersburg, as well as the installation of a medium-range anti-missile defence system, suggests that the Baltic country is wanting to challenge Russia despite its military barely even having enough professional soldiers to field a single battalion. At the same time, and just as provocative, Estonian authorities discussed an introduction of a 24 nautical mile coastal zone in the Gulf of Finland to limit the navigation of Russian ships.
It is demonstrated that Estonia is a highly active anti-Russian state that hopes its actions will receive Western tributes and rewards. However, in pursuing this goal, the Baltic country is going as far as wanting to break international law by restricting Russian shipping in waters it has a right to navigate through.
Moscow has repeatedly warned that attempts to deploy offensive NATO weapons will immediately provoke retaliatory steps. By Estonia wanting to place weapon systems that can target Russia’s second largest city, it cannot be discounted that the Russian military will deploy the Iskander system or another type of weapon to completely cover Estonia’s sea, land and air territory.
It is recalled that Lithuania attempted to blockade the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad in 2022 by stopping rail and road transportation and attempted to justify the action because of the EU’s sanctions regime. This quickly failed as a military and economic blockade can lead to a ‘casus belli’ – a reason for war, which would not insure Lithuania under NATO’s “mutual defence” article.
Larger European NATO countries are rotating their units, as well as military equipment, including aviation and F-16 fighter jets, in the Baltic countries. The Baltic countries are full of foreign soldiers and equipment as they themselves cannot ensure their own security despite implementing policies that are extremely provocative and hostile to Russia.
The Russian ambassador in Tallinn, Vladimir Lipayev, who disclosed that Western countries plan to supply Estonia with the most modern types of conventional weapons, also said that the Anglos had an interest in creating an anti-Russian outpost in the Baltic country in order to carry out economic, political, cultural and military pressure on Russia.
However, the Baltic countries are playing with fire as the Ukraine war has demonstrated that Russia is capable of demilitarizing hostile states. Even Ukraine, which has all the resources of the West behind it and the second largest army in Europe after Russia, is failing to stem back the tide of war and territorial loss.
With the Ukrainian military appearing to be on course for an imminent collapse in 2023, the US and UK are escalating tensions so that continuous conflict can drain Russia’s resources and attention. An internationalized effort to involve as many countries as possible in a confrontation with Russia only puts countries under a puppet status at risk of Russian retaliation, as Ukraine shows.
As said, if Estonia were to blockade Russian ships, it cannot be protected under NATO’s Article 5 as it initiated the hostility by breaking international law. Understandably, the leading countries of the EU do not want to be exposed to a Russian counterattack, which is why the Baltics and Poland are being used as cannon fodder instead – just as Ukraine currently is.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, a dividing line in the middle of the Gulf of Finland was agreed upon between Russia and newly independent Estonia. From this middle line, Finland and Estonia retreated three kilometres to allow Russia a six-kilometre channel for the free passage of Russian merchant and military fleets, thus actually making these international waters. In order to blockade Russia in the Gulf of Finland, it is necessary for Finland to implement the same policy. If Tallin unilaterally introduces such a zone in its territorial waters, then Russia has the option to use the Finnish part of the gulf.
For now, there is no indication that Finland plans to block Russian ships. If Finland and Estonia were to block Russian shipping, Moscow would have a strong case to appeal to the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, something that would surely humiliate a country like Finland which likes to pride itself on supposedly adhering to international law very strictly.
Therefore, although the Estonian side may be enthusiastic in enforcing anti-Russian measures on the encouragement of Anglo countries, there is a likelihood that regional countries like Finland and Germany will not want a new front of tensions with Russia and will attempt to coerce the Baltic country to moderate its attitude.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
Sweden Confirms ‘Baltic Titanic’ Was Used for Secret Military Transports
Samizdat – 23.12.2022
The Estonia’s sinking in 1994 killed 852 people and is seen as the second-worst peacetime maritime disaster, ranking only behind the Titanic. With decades having gone by, questions about the tragedy abound, despite survivors’ numerous calls for justice.
In a sensational confession, the Swedish Armed Forces have admitted that the Estonia passenger ferry, whose demise in 1994 is seen as one of the worst maritime disasters of the 20th century, was used for secret military transports.
Ever since the Estonia sank on September 28, 1994, there have been rumors that the ferry had military cargo on board on the night of the accident. The accident commission appointed shortly afterwards dismissed the rumors as unsubstantiated fantasies. However, in 2004 Swedish media revealed that at least on two occasions, two weeks and one week before the accident, cars loaded with military gear were transported to Sweden.
In a new document, “a handful” of military transports from the Baltic countries with the Swedish Armed Forces as recipients were finally confirmed, yet without exact dates. However, the document features “electronic equipment without any connection to weapons systems” transported in civilian vehicles.
The Armed Forces’ written response also cited “Project Baltic Support”, a Swedish military aid program run in 1993-2003. Among others, the project included “equipment transferred to the Baltics” as well as “comprehensive training programs.”
The somewhat belated and mostly involuntary admission comes in response to an ongoing re-investigation of the Estonia shipwreck following a groundbreaking documentary that revealed a previously unknown hole in the ship’s hull and sowed skepticism in the official version. As part of their work, the investigators queried the Armed Forces about the military transports.
“At the beginning of the 90s, the Baltic states were newly independent and the Soviet Union had fallen, so there was certainly a great interest, among others, within the Swedish Armed Forces in getting military equipment from there,” Jonas Backstrand, chairman of the Estonia investigation at the State Accident Commission told Swedish media, citing interviews with both current and former employees of the Armed Forces.
Previous investigations hinted that the Armed Forces may have organized the transports in collaboration with officials from Ericsson Group. The Swedish Customs had promised the military not to check the cars’ loads, something it itself later confirmed.
Questions Remain
The passenger ferry Estonia sank on the night of September 28, 1994, about halfway between Tallinn and Stockholm. 852 people died in the disaster, which is now sometimes referred to as the “Baltic Titanic”. 28 years later, it remains largely a mystery despite survivors’ numerous calls for justice.
While a subsequent investigation formally placed the blame on a faulty bow visor that allowed thousands of tons of water to gush in, an abundance of alternative theories have flourished over the decades, including the Estonia being sunk by submarine. These theories, while officially dismissed as conspiracies, were nevertheless fueled by the Swedish government’s hasty decision to drop thousands of tons of pebbles on the site and thereby turn the wreck into a sea grave. Furthermore, the so-called Estonia Act was quickly railroaded through, establishing the sanctity of the site and prohibiting citizens from the signatory counties from even approaching the wreck.
Recently, 17 Estonia survivors penned an opinion piece in Swedish media, urging to add more resources and review the accident in its entirety. They stress that it took 27 years before they were allowed to testify and that the final report from 1997 didn’t fully agree with their experiences.
“If during the 90s it was sensitive to investigate because of security policy issues and Sweden’s need to assert its non-alignment, perhaps it can be seen differently now?”, the survivors wrote, alluding to Sweden’s vaunted vestiges of neutrality that went down in flames earlier this year as the Nordic country filed an application to join NATO.
Time to drop illusions, the West is waging a war to destroy Russia
By Vladimir Kornilov – RIA Novosti – September 20, 2022
And here comes Bucha 2.0: Another provocation where Ukraine has allegedly discovered “mass graves of victims” shortly after Russian troops have withdrawn.
This time in Izium. What it amounts to is clear evidence that along with the development of the military conflict in Ukraine, the informational “special” operation against Russia is intensifying.
It’s not even about Kiev’s reaction – officials there concoct primitive fakes against our state and the army non-stop, around the clock.
The indicator here is the way in which this provocation was immediately picked up by Western politicians, who are already urgently calling for an “international tribunal” to punish Russia. Meanwhile, the West’s media, in a united push, is putting unfounded statements about “mass executions and torture in Izium” on its front pages.
This fakery is crass and easily refuted. But it is clear from this unanimous reaction of the West that no one there cares at all how and when the people buried in the cemetery died. The culprit has been appointed in advance – and it has to be Russia. Because only this verdict fits into the overall strategy of the current campaign in Ukraine.
Which, as we can see, has nothing to do with Ukraine. The West is completely indifferent to whatever happened to the Ukrainians, whoever killed them (even if it was Kiev’s own army or foreign mercenaries) and no matter how many of them died. Because it is not fighting a war on this territory for the Ukrainians, and especially not for Ukraine.
We must speak frankly and openly: the West is waging a fierce war against the Russian state, using local forces as proxies. And this is covered by the fig leaf of “defending democracy.” However, what they really want is for Russia to be destroyed. Forever! Irrevocably!
Janusz Bugajski, a leading expert, recently published his book “Failed State: A Guide to Russia’s Rupture.” It is worth highlighting that the work is not a reaction to the Ukrainian conflict, instead it is a logical continuation of all that this ‘Kremlinologist’ has been publicly talking and writing about for years.
Back in early 2019, three years before the current crisis started, he published a feature article in the influential Washington newspaper The Hill, entitled ‘Managing Russia’s Dissolution.’
This was not just a forecast or theoretical speculation by some dreamer, it was a direct call to action by an outspoken Russophobe. Suffice it to recall that Bugajski then openly urged the White House to promote regional and ethnic self-determination within the Russian Federation. At the same time, he was speculating which regions of the state destroyed by the West should receive independence and which should be given to Ukraine, Finland, Japan and even China.
It cannot be said that Bugajski’s article was the only theoretical work on the disintegration of our state. But other reports (at least in the public domain) still sought to veil direct calls for the forced break-up of Russia with arguments about the need to weaken our state. This was the case, for example, with a sensational study by the US intelligence corporation RAND commissioned by the US Department of Defense in 2019.
Now the masks are being thrown off and the cadre of Russophobes can openly articulate their long-held dreams. The Daily Telegraph recently featured the former NATO commander in Europe, General Ben Hodges, in a high-profile article about preparing for Russia’s disintegration. Hodges, who is employed by CEPA – a lobby group bankrolled by US arms contractors and NATO – is arguably one of the most active ‘talking heads’ about the Ukrainian crisis on Western television right now.
The general hopes the collapse of our state will be fueled by our ethnic diversity and he hopes that Western economic sanctions will create a situation in which it will be impossible to feed 144 million people. The American has clearly not thought how these arguments could also be applied to his home country, which has been torn apart by racial divisions in recent years.
Below Hodges, the idea has been cheerfully picked up by less well-known figures operating on the ideological field of Russophobia. The Polish magazine New Eastern Europe published an article about deconstructing Russia and reconstructing the “post-Russian space,” calling it a risky but inevitable scenario. The authors called on the West to lead the process of our state’s disintegration right away.
This is echoed by the Canadian-British professor Taras Kuzio on the pages of the Atlantic Council, a NATO-aligned pressure group and the main mouthpiece of Western Russophobes. He, too, cheerfully declares that the process of “the collapse of Putin’s Russian empire” has begun.
Hodges’ theses are repeated almost word for word by Estonia’s top Kremlinologist Vladimir Yushkin on the pages of the website of the International Centre for Defence and Security. However, he adds nonsense about the allegedly developing “colonization of Siberia by the Chinese” – which tells us he doesn’t know how to use statistics.
All these “prophecies” have been brought into the political realm by Estonian President Alar Karis. Opening the NATO Military Committee conference in Tallinn last Friday, he openly admonished the Chiefs of Staff of the US-led bloc to give up their “fear of destabilizing the situation in Russia.”
This is not some retired general, nor a private person with a professorial rank – it’s the official head of a NATO member country. And he is not shying away from calling on the high command of the alliance to pursue a deliberate policy of creating a situation of instability in Russia.
So, what more proof does anyone need of what the collective West is hoping to achieve?
The ideological touchstone of European liberals, The Economist magazine, has devoted its latest issue to how the West should ensure Ukraine’s victory over Russia. Apart from the traditional advice on further arming the Kiev regime, the magazine explicitly demands that the West must try to drive a wedge between the Russian government and the Russian people. To do this, leaders are urged to bet on Russian liberals who have moved abroad, who in these circumstances can be safely called traitors back home.
They are now in a situation where Russia’s enemies are openly talking about using them to carry out an unrealistic plan to dismember our common motherland!
Thus, we can safely say that the collective West has already moved from talk to action and is openly challenging the very existence of the Russian Federation.
It’s ideologues and a number of top politicians make no secret of the fact that by exploiting the conflict in Ukraine, they are deliberately helping to create an existential threat to our state. The sooner we ourselves officially acknowledge this, the more effectively we will be able to move to a different stage in both relations with our neighbors and the military operation in Ukraine itself.
We still adhere to certain gentlemen’s rules of the game, which were adopted after the end of the Cold War. But now the stakes have been raised too high.
To be clear, I am not calling for us to copy the criminal actions of Ukraine. We, unlike them, do not deliberately kill children, torture prisoners of war, or exterminate civilians.
But in the face of increasing threats to Russian citizens, we are left with no choice but to act much more forcefully against military infrastructure, even if it’s also used by civilians, in the direction of decision-making centres, and towards those individuals directly responsible for terror and murders wherever they are located, as well as tackling states that pursue hostile policies.
After all, we should not forget that when an existential threat to Russia arises, we need to present a tough response.
Those who threaten our homeland should be constantly reminded of this.
Search of Sputnik Estonia Office Was Illegal, Local Court Rules
Samizdat – 13.07.2022
Sputnik International’s Estonia-based sister portal Sputnik Meedia was forced to shut down in March amid unprecedented pressure from Estonian authorities and banks, and a wave of personal threats against employees. But the outlet’s persecution by local authorities goes all the way back to 2019.
An Estonian court has ruled authorities’ April search of the former editorial office of Sputnik Meedia and former Sputnik Meedia editor-in-chief Elena Cherysheva’s home illegal, Cherysheva has informed Sputnik.
Cherysheva, who was detained on April 6 for alleged “crimes against peace” and purported “violations of international sanctions,” had her house searched. Her husband was taken to the former office of Sputnik Meedia, and it too was searched. After 16 hours of rummaging, authorities sent Cherysheva to a detention center, but was later released on bail. The ex-Sputnik Meedia employee said the searches were authorized by Estonian State Prosecutor’s Office lead prosecutor Taavi Pern.
“On April 8, the Prosecutor’s Office sent a search warrant and additional documents to the preliminary investigation judge in Harju County Court requesting that the search warrant be recognized as admissible and justified. The judge did not do so. As the court clarified, a person whose activities are related to the processing of information for journalistic purposes can be searched only on the basis of a ruling by a preliminary investigation judge or a court decision,” Cherysheva explained.
She added that the Prosecutor’s Office filed a complaint with the Tallinn District Court challenging the Harju County Court’s decision, but the higher court upheld the ruling.
Cherysheva further revealed the Harju County Court had also ruled in her favor to return her part of the personal property which authorities seized in April, after the State Prosecutor’s Office refused to do so.
“In its decision, the Harju County Court emphasized that given the decision of the Tallinn District Court of May 10 on the groundlessness and illegality of the search, it is not clear to the court on what basis the investigator continues to withhold funds found and seized during the search,” she said.
Sputnik’s Estonian sister agency has been hounded by the Baltic country’s authorities for years. Sputnik Meedia itself was created in early 2020 by former employees of Sputnik Estonia, which was forced to shutter its doors amid threats of criminal charges against its journalists by police, and after Estonian banks suspended Sputnik-related accounts in late 2019.
Sputnik Meedia was forced to terminate its operations in early March of this year, with banks freezing salaries and closing the media outlet’s accounts amid alleged suspicions of “money laundering, terrorist financing and the illegal sale of alcohol.” On top of that, the agency’s editor-in-chief and staff received regular threats against their life and safety.
15,000 NATO troops from 14 nations, including the US, Sweden, Finland and Ukraine, start drills near Russia
Samizdat | May 16, 2022
Large-scale NATO military drills started in Estonia on Monday. The exercise dubbed ‘Hedgehog 2022’ is one of the largest in the Baltic nation’s history, according to the military bloc. The drills will involve some 15,000 troops from 14 nations, including both military bloc members and their partners.
Soldiers from Finland, Sweden, Georgia and Ukraine are among those that will take part in the exercise, Finnish public broadcaster Yle reported. The drills will include all branches of the armed forces and will involve air, sea and land exercises, as well as cyber warfare training, according to the broadcaster.
According to a NATO statement, the drills will also see the US Navy Wasp-class landing ship ‘Kearsarge’ take part in the exercises. Both the military bloc and Estonian Defense Forces deputy commander, Major General Veiko-Vello Palm, have denied that the drills just over 60km from the Russian border have anything to do with Moscow’s ongoing military action in Ukraine.
The drills started just a day after Finland and Sweden officially announced their plans to join NATO, and were planned long before the conflict in Ukraine broke out, Western officials have said.
The exercises in Estonia are, however, just one part of NATO’s large-scale military activities near the Russian border. Another Baltic state, Lithuania, is hosting the ‘Iron Wolf’ exercise, which involves 3,000 NATO troops and 1,000 pieces of military equipment, including Germany’s Leopard 2 tanks.
Two of NATO’s biggest exercises – ‘Defender Europe’ and ‘Swift Response’ – are taking place in Poland and eight other countries, involving 18,000 troops from 20 nations, according to NATO’s statement on Friday.
“Exercises like these show that NATO stands strong and ready to protect our nations and defend against any threat,” the military bloc’s spokesperson, Oana Lungescu, said, adding that the drills “help to remove any room for miscalculation or misunderstanding about our resolve to protect and defend every inch of allied territory.”
The NATO Response Force is currently taking part in the 7,500-strong ‘Wettiner Heide’ drills in Germany. The Mediterranean Sea is about to witness ‘Neptune series’ naval drills involving the USS ‘Harry S. Truman’ carrier strike group that will be placed under NATO command. This will only be the second time since the end of the Cold War that a US carrier group has been transferred under the military bloc’s command, NATO has said.
In June, the Baltic States and Poland will host what NATO describes as “Europe’s largest integrated air and missile defense exercise,” which would involve 23 nations.
In late April, Finland hosted NATO naval drills. Now, it is also hosting a joint land exercise, in which troops from the US, the UK, Estonia and Latvia are participating.
The massive military wargames are taking place amid heightened tensions between Russia, NATO and some of the military bloc’s partners. Finland, which shares a long border with Russia, and Sweden decided to reconsider their long-standing policy of non-alignment following a major change in public opinion after the launch of Russia’s attack on Ukraine.
The development sparked a wave of criticism from Moscow, which warned that it would have to respond if Finland and Sweden join NATO. Moscow also maintains that it considers NATO’s expansion as a direct threat to its own security.
NATO warships arrive to Baltic Sea
Samizdat | April 15, 2022
A group of NATO warships belonging to the Standing NATO Maritime Group 1 (SNMG1) and Standing NATO Mine Countermeasures Group 1 (SNMCMG1) have started arriving in the Baltic Sea to partake in joint exercises with allied and partnered nations, with some having already docked in a port in Tallinn, Estonia, according to a NATO press release published on Thursday.
The bloc announced the move on Monday, saying “NATO regularly deploys maritime forces in the Blatic Sea in order to maintain a credible and capable defensive capability in accordance with treaty obligations.”
The SNMG1 consists of flagships from the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany and the United Kingdom, while the SNMCMG1 is composed of Norwegian, Belgian, German, Estonian, British and Dutch mine layers and minesweepers.
These are two of a total of four task groups comprising ships from various allied countries that are continuously available to NATO to perform different tasks ranging from participation in exercises to operational missions.
Four ships from the SNMG1 group arrived at the Port of Tallinn on Thursday, where they were joined by the Canadian frigate HMCS Halifax (FFH 330).
“I am very pleased to welcome the SNMG1 teams in Tallinn,” said commodore Jüri Saska, commander of the Estonian Navy. “The call is especially important in the current security situation, in which our neighbor to the east has taken up arms against the freedom and independence of the people of Ukraine.”
Saska added that a strong maritime presence on NATO’s eastern border showcased the speed, flexibility and determination of the alliance to defend member states on land, by air and at sea.
The group is set to conduct routine operations and joint exercises with the Estonian Navy next week, which are intended to “improve interoperability among NATO forces and increase shared knowledge of maritime tactics, while promoting professionalism among sailors, cultural understanding and trust,” according to the NATO press release.
Uninvited foreign troops must leave, African nation says
RT | January 24, 2022
Denmark must “immediately withdraw” some 90 troops it deployed to Mali last week “without [the government’s] consent and in violation of the protocols” allowing European nations to intervene in that African country, the government in Bamako said on Monday.
Some 91 Danes from the Jaeger Corps special forces arrived in Mali on January 18, as part of Task Force Takuba, a French-led counter-terrorism mission in the West African country. According to the Danish defense ministry, their job will be to reinforce the border with Niger and Burkina Faso, train Malian Armed Forces, and provide medical services to the peacekeepers.
While the government of Mali is grateful to “all its partners involved in the fight against terrorism,” it stressed “the need to obtain the prior agreement of the Malian authorities” before sending any troops to the country, says the communique signed by Colonel Abdoulaye Maiga, spokesman for the Ministry of Administration and Decentralization.
Announcing the deployment of the force last week, the government in Copenhagen said it had been scheduled in April 2021, as France sought to withdraw some of its troops from Mali.
Their objective was “to stabilize Mali and parts of the border triangle between Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso, and to ensure that civilians are protected from terrorist groups,” the Danish military said.
The Jaegers are also experienced in “training and educating” local militaries, a job they have previously performed in Afghanistan and Iraq. They were sent shortly after Sweden withdrew its contingent from Mali. The French-led operation also involves forces from Belgium, Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal and Sweden.
Task Force Takuba has operated in Mali since March 2020, when Paris decided to wrap up the previous Operation Barkhane. France has maintained a military presence in its former West African colony since 2013, to help the government in Bamako deal with a Tuareg rebellion in the northwest of the country and subsequent terrorist insurgency loyal to Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS).
Relations between Bamako and Paris have grown chilly since the latest military takeover in Mali in 2021, and France has since closed three of its military bases there, in Kidal, Tessalit, and Timbuktu.
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Left-leaning despisers of 9/11 Truth movement: Do you really believe in miracles?
David Ray Griffin | Global Research | 06 Jul 2010
An Open Letter to Terry Allen, Noam Chomsky, Alexander Cockburn, David Corn, Chris Hayes, George Monbiot, Matthew Rothschild, and Matt Taibbi.
[1]According to several left-leaning critics of the 9/11 Truth Movement, some of its central claims, especially about the destruction of the World Trade Center, show its members to be scientifically challenged. In the opinion of some of these critics, moreover, claims made by members of this movement are sometimes unscientific in the strongest possible sense, implying an acceptance of magic and miracles. … Full article
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