Even casual followers of foreign affairs know thatEstoniahates Russia for historical reasons, with the memory of its contentious incorporation into the USSR still fresh in many of its people’s minds.
That’s why it raced to join NATO after the Soviet Union’s dissolution and has sought to play the ultimate vanguard role against Russia through thepossible hosting of its allies’ nukes.
It’s therefore surprising that Estonia of all countries just publicly chided Zelensky for fearmongering about Russia.
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Zelensky recently speculated that Russia’s mobile internet curbs aren’t about preventing Ukrainian drones from using these signals for targeting purposes but might precede a massive mobilization ahead of another large-scale attack on Ukraine or even an invasion of theBaltic States. He then questioned NATO’s commitment to Article 5 in the second scenario.This promptedfurious reactionsfrom the Estonian Foreign Minister and the head of the Estonian Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee.
The first insisted that there are no signs of an impending invasion, argued that Russia is actually nowadays too weak to launch one anyhow, and insisted that NATO’s commitment to Article 5 is ironclad, while the second accused Zelensky of laundering Russian propaganda about the country’s strength. Those two chided him in spite of Russian Security Council SecretarySergey Shoigurecently remindingthe Baltic States of his country’s right to self-defense if they allow Ukrainian drones to use their airspace.
The context concerns late-March’slarge-scale Ukrainian drone attacksagainst Russia’s energy infrastructure in St. Petersburg that some claimed crossed through those three. With reference to the aforesaid,Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrovsoon thereafteraddedthat
“Patience is often described as a defining Russian national trait. As the saying goes, ‘God endured and told us to do likewise.’ Yet patience is not limitless. It may even be beneficial that no one fully understands where this ‘red line’ lies.”
The Duma is also in the process ofpromulgating a billthat would authorize the use of the armed forces on a case-by-case basis to protect Russian citizens abroad from persecution in a move that some have spun as preemptively justifying an invasion of the Baltic States where its citizens have faced such plights. Despite these three developments, those two leading Estonian foreign policy officials still chided Zelensky, thus rubbishing all related speculation about a supposedly imminent Russian threat to them.
Source: Global Research
