The headless statue of the Russian sailor Evgeny Nikonov, who was allegedly brutally murdered by the Nazis, in the courtyard of the History Museum in Tallinn.
Image: Nikolai Klimeniouk
After Putin called the mobilization, Estonia started exercises for reservists. When you’re in Tallinn, you immediately notice: It’s more than just solidarity with Ukraine, it’s connectedness.
DThe Estonian capital of Tallinn is more than 1,500 kilometers from the Russian-held territories of Ukraine, but the front feels close. Fighter jets fly low over the airport. Military vehicles are on the way. After Putin called the mobilization, Estonia started exercises for reservists. Ukrainian flags are everywhere: on house facades, in shop windows, right next to the airfield on a pole where the EU flag used to fly. You notice immediately: It’s more than just solidarity, it’s connectedness.
The border between Estonia and Russia is 336 kilometers long, but its course is not precisely defined. Russia does not want to recognize the Tartu Peace Treaty, which ended Estonia’s war of independence from Soviet Russia in 1920 and with it two hundred years of Russian rule over the Baltic country. One automatically wants to write “the small Baltic country”, although Estonia is larger than the Netherlands. Independence did not last long. In 1939, Hitler and Stalin partitioned Central Europe between themselves (an arrangement known as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact), with the Soviet Union annexing Estonia the following year.
