Heritage board rejects permanent roof plans for Pirita Convent
(ERR)
“Pirita Convent, also known as St. Bridget's Convent, was built in the early 15th century from limestone and timber. The Pirita Convent used to be the largest nunnery in Old Livonia. The Pirita Convent was destroyed by the Russian army in late January 1575, the Pirita Convent websit says. Until the 1930s a potato field covered the former nuns' quarters and potatoes were stored in the former abbess's residence.”
“The first systematic excavations started in 1934 and led to remarkable findings. In the early 1960s the excavations shifted to south, focusing on remains on the east side of the monks quarters.”
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| Pirita convent - Photo: Zairon, 2014 - WikiMedia Commons |
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Friday
13. September
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Kaljulaid in Kyiv: Ukraine can become the next success story
(ERR)
“Speaking at the forum during a two-day working visit to Kyiv, Kaljulaid urged Ukraine to keep going with the reforms it had in place, adding the country could show the world the right way to develop if it does.”
Kaljulaid on working visit to Ukraine
(ERR | Ukrinform)
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Valgamaal toimub Kaitseliidu suurõppus ‘Sibul 2019’
(Lõuna Leht)
“13.-15. septembril toimub Valga linnas ja vallas Lõuna maakaitseringkonna suurõppus Sibul 2019, milles osalevad Kaitseliidu Lõuna-Eesti malevad.”
Moscow enters a decisive stage in subverting the history of its neighbours and World War II
by Toomas Alatalu - ICDS 22. Aug.
“Russia’s announcement on 9 July that Moscow will hold a fireworks display on 22 September to celebrate the 75th anniversary of liberating Tallinn from fascist occupation was a painful and defiant reminder of the past and culminated with an official protest by the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. … Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for Russian MFA, expressed astonishment at this, claiming that the fireworks celebrating the liberation of former Soviet states and certain European cities from Nazi rule had begun on 10 April and would conclude on 9 May 2020. In other words, this was a confirmation of the events being part of the major “our victory” programme discussed in the February 2019 issue of Diplomaatia. This marks the completion of another campaign by Russia/the Soviet Union celebrating the anniversary of their victory in World War II, organised on the basis of a decision made by Putin’s team in 2000. …”
Study says Tallinn-Helsinki tunnel could bring Estonia €50 million
(ERR | Postimees)
“According to Finest Bay Area's plans, the tunnel train's annual pass would cost 2,499 euros, with a single ticket priced at €50.”
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Department of Cyber Diplomacy to launch later this year
(ERR)
“Countries are increasingly prioritising cybersecurity and safety in their foreign policy aims and our allies see Estonia as a leader in this field," Foreign Minister Urmas Reinsalu said. The new department will be headed by Heli Tiirmaa-Klaar a diplomatic representative with special powers in the field of cybersecurity. The department will help Estonia to speak more effectively at the global level and ensure that the country remains at the forefront of developments.”
EU defense commissioner Sylvie Goulard may face turf wars
(Politico-Europe)
“By putting the former French defense minister in charge of a new directorate general for defense industries and space, incoming European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has flagged her ambition for Europe to take more responsibility for its own defense.”
—
“That’s likely to trigger turf wars with EU national governments, NATO and the United States over who should be in charge of European military cooperation and the West’s lucrative defense industry.”
Tallinn gallery told to remove fake Trump and Diana billboard images
(The Guardian)
“Tallinn’s Fotografiska gallery has been ordered to take down a billboard featuring the images that was advertising the exhibition. The ruling does not affect the display inside the gallery.”
Realpolitik 2.0
by Sergiy Korsunsky - CEPA
“This new reality and current order can be best described as the world of Realpolitik. A term once coined in Germany, it has much broader application today: “Realpolitik 2.0” can be defined as an entirely pragmatic attitude toward world affairs combined with information control and distortion with no remorse for weaker states. Realpolitik means that a country can have two or more independent but contradictory policy tracks in parallel: yes, Russia might be an aggressor, but we can trade with it.”
Interview: Jean-Claude Juncker
(Euronews)
“Brexit is failure of Britain, not the European Union.”
Locals Rage At Moscow As Siberian Forests Burn
(RFERL)
“Massive wildfires are burning across Siberia. In the Irkutsk region, a lack of equipment and manpower to fight the blazes has left locals feeling abandoned by Moscow.”
Eco-protesters fight Moscow’s attempt to ‘trash’ Russia’s north
(PRI)
“The fight over Shiyes — a remote railway outpost in Russia’s Arkhangelsk Province that is to play host to the giant landfill — first erupted a little over a year ago after local hunters came across a secret construction site deep in the region’s forests. … Locals soon learned its purpose: to house a 20-square-mile storage area for refuse produced by Moscow inhabitants.”
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Thursday
12. September
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✔︎ Valge nimekiri: kvaliteetne venekeelne meedia
(Propastop)
“… venekeelsetest meediakanalitest, mis ei kuulu Kremli mõjuvälja ja mida võib seetõttu usaldada.”
✔︎ List of Russian-language media outlets that can be trusted
(Propastop)
“The whitelist is for Russian-language media that are not owned, directly or indirectly, by the Kremlin. As a rule, these channels are located outside Russia, but they write a lot about what is happening in Russia. We focus on channels covering important socio-political and social issues.”
Estonian Minister Wants to Abolish Visa-Free Entry for Ukrainians
(Multiple sources)
“… Mart Helme, who is also the Chairman of the anti-immigration Conservative People’s Party, has recently ordered to find out whether Estonia can lift visa-free entry for Ukrainian passport holders.
Minister Helme, who is planning to present a legislative initiative to the parliament to make his plans regarding Ukrainian travelers happen, has called granting visa liberalization to Ukraine a ‘Trojan horse’.”
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Court jails Russian citizen caught spying in Estonia
(ERR)
“In May 2019, the Internal Security Service (ISS) caught a Russian citizen, A. A., against whom the Office of the Prosecutor General brought charges according to a section of the Penal Code dealing with non-violent activities directed against the independence and sovereignty or territorial integrity of the Republic of Estonia. The Harju County Court found A. A. guilty three months later, on Aug. 29. The spy was handed a jail sentence of five years.”
Vene saatkond nõuab Vene spiooni kohta riigilt lisainfot
(Delfi | RFERL)
“Täna ilmnes, et 5. mail pidas Kapo kinni Venemaa kodaniku, kellele prokuratuur esitas süüdistuse Eesti vastases vägivallata tegevuses. Salapärane kodanik A.A mõisteti 29. augustil süüdi ning ta sai viieaastase reaalse vanglakaristuse.”
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Finland sees smallest grain harvest in decades
(Yle)
“Hanna Aho, a climate justice expert from Kepa, a development NGO, previously told Yle News that temperature swings in Finland were affecting domestic food production.”
Only 4% Of Europeans Trust Trump
(Forbes)
“According to the survey of 60,000 people across [only] 14 EU countries, conducted by the European Council on Foreign Relations, less than one in 20 Europeans trust Donald Trump. After years or erratic foreign policy and Trump’s public denigration of NATO, the US-dominated security umbrella over Europe, most Europeans no longer believe they can rely on the United States to guarantee their security.”
—
“Our polling confirms that Trump is toxic in Europe, and that this is feeding into distrust of the U.S. Security Guarantee,” says report author Susi Dennison, director of the European Power programme at ECFR.”
The Specter of 1939
by Edward Lucas - CEPA
“Every Pole knows why September 17th, 1939 matters. … The 80th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of eastern Poland will go unmarked in the West. In Russia, it will prompt yet more lies and propaganda obscuring the Soviet Union’s cozy ties with Nazi Germany. …”
Russian police carry out mass raids against opposition activists
(The Guardian)
“Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny says searches show ‘Putin is very angry’ after Moscow polls.”
Moscow Student Protester Declared ‘Extremist’
(The Moscow Times)
“Yegor Zhukov, 21, was detained last month on charges of “organizing mass unrest … Zhukov’s name appeared Thursday alongside more than 9,000 Russian citizens whom the Federal Financial Monitoring Service has blacklisted as “terrorists and extremists.”
Student Arrest Puts Elite Moscow University to the Test
(Moscow Times)
“The Higher School of Economics, a bastion of free thinking since the 1990s, has become caught up in the opposition protest movement. … HSE has always been one of the few safe spaces for free thought in Putin's Russia. It has hired professors who are openly critical of official policy and published reports that often contradicted those of the Kremlin.
Zhukov, his friends told The Moscow Times, is in many ways a product of HSE's freethinking philosophy. “
—
"For a while now, the university has been operating in a political vacuum," said Kirill Martynov, a philosophy professor at HSE and prominent journalist. "But it seems like reality has finally caught up with us."
Russian Youth Stand Up to the State
(Spiegel)
“A new generation of youth in Russia is standing up to Kremlin oppression.”
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Wednesday
11. September
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Analüüs soovitab Eestile tuumaenergiat, automakse ja lihatootmise kärbet
(ERR)
“Valitsus arutas teisipäeval esimest korda meetmeid, mis peaks aitama Eestil vähendada kasvuhoonegaaside (KHG) heitmeid.”
Europe's climate woes — can this help
(Deutsche Welle)
“According to a recent academic paper by Technical University of Applied Sciences in the German city of Regensburg, the EU is a world leader in this technology, home to nearly 80% of the 153 projects globally.”
A Green Industrial Revolution
(Berlin Policy Journal)
“To stop climate change, growth needs to be decoupled from environmental pollution. Europe should lead the way, both as a model for others and to secure its own economic future.”
Nordic countries are now working closer with Nato’s Estonia-based centre of excellence in cyber security
(Computer Weekly)
“The Nordic countries are deepening their commitment to Nato’s Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence against a backdrop of an elevated level of threat from hostile actors in cyber space. Leading Nordic technology groups, including Tieto and VTT, are also stepping up cyber security collaborations with the Tallinn, Estonia-based centre, which carries out training and exercises covering technology, strategy, operations and law.”
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Tuesday
10. September
__________
Riigikogu off to a rocky start
(Postimees)
“Parties were unable to avoid a skirmish during the opening sitting of the fall session of the Riigikogu yesterday when chairman of the Riigikogu Henn Põlluaas (EKRE) criticizing the opposition and the president in his speech caused Reform Party MPs to storm out.”
U.S. Navy Expeditionary Units Begin ‘Exercise Northern Coasts 2019’
(NATO | US Navy | Helsinki Times)
“German and Danish-led Exercise Northern Coasts 2019, Sept. 4-18, is a multilateral exercise that brings together maritime forces in the Baltic Sea and in the vicinity of the Baltic Sea to promote anti-submarine warfare (ASW), explosive ordnance disposal (EOD), and mine countermeasures (MCM) interoperability between participating forces.”
—
“Northern Coasts will take place near the Danish straits connecting the Baltic Sea to the North Sea, as well as between Kiel and Bornholm. It will run until 18 September.”
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“Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Estonia, Finland, France, Italy, Canada, Croatia, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Sweden, United Kingdom and the United States will participate …”
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__________
European Commission
2019-2024
__________
Von Der Leyen Sets Out Vision For A Sovereign EU
(Berlin Policy Journal)
“The new European Commission line-up signals an appetite to take on the United States, China, and Russia using existing tools like trade and competition, and new ones like an “EU Army.”
—
“In the face of Donald Trump’s attacks on NATO, the European Union drew up plans last year for an “EU Defense Union” that would pool the military resources and know-how of member states. Long opposed by the United Kingdom as the dreaded “European Army,” the idea has only been made possible with the impending exit of the UK from the EU. Contrary to many portrayals of the idea, it does not involve a single EU military but rather national militaries pooling their resources in order to be more efficient. Most significantly, the defense union is designed to be independent of the United States, unlike NATO, which relies on America.“
Kadri Simson becomes European commissioner for energy
(ERR)
“Simson has not yet revealed who her cabinet chief could be and how many Estonians could be included. She said she had met with five to six people but has not yet made a decision. … Typically, the Commissioner 's Cabinet is made up of six people, of whom no more than three may be of the same nationality as the Commissioner.”
Energy Independence
(Berlin Policy Journal)
“Von der Leyen’s choice of the Estonian Kadri Simson as energy commissioner also maintains this emphasis on European sovereignty. Estonia is on the front line of concerns about Europe’s dependence on Russian gas, and the country has consistently urged drastic action to safeguard European energy security by diversifying supply. Estonia, along with other Eastern European governments, has been fiercely against the controversial Nord Stream II pipeline bringing gas from Russia to Germany.”
Britain’s August 1944 Bombing of Koenigsberg ‘an Anti-Soviet Act,’ Kaliningrad Lecturer Says
by Paul Goble
“A measure of just how far Putin-era Russian propagandists are prepared to go in projecting the Kremlin’s current political views into the past regardless of the facts is the insistence by a Kaliningrad lecturer that Britain’s carpet bombing of Koenigsberg in August 1944 was aimed not at Hitler’s Germany but against Stalin’s Soviet Union.”
Russia-Ukraine Prisoner Swap: Step Toward Peace or False Dawn?
(VOA)
“The prisoner swap between Ukraine and Russia Saturday [70 prisoners in all] has prompted hopes that Moscow and Kyiv are ready for serious talks to end a more than five-year war in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine — a Moscow-fomented conflict that’s claimed more than 13,000 lives.”
—
“While some are seizing on the prisoner exchange as the possible start of something new, for others it has triggered worries that Putin is using Ukraine to toy with the West.”
Korea: The digital future has already arrived - it’s in Estonia
(Korea JoongAng Daily)
“Comprehensive technology education puts the Baltic country light-years ahead.”
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Monday
9. September
__________
Kaljulaid: mind paneb muretsema silmapiir
(Postimees)
“Meie taga on Eesti põhiseadus. Meie taga on rahvusvaheline sõprade ring, kes toetub sarnastele alusväärtustele. Ja meile endile loodavad need, kellel on meist vähem vabadusi ja võimalusi. Aga meil on ka enesekindel rumaluse paraad. …”
One Article, Many Ways to Disinform
(EU vs Disinfo)
“The recent purchase of an anti-tank missile system by Estonia resulted in illogical, threatening and ridiculing narratives by pro-Kremlin media. The Estonian Defence Forces are caught in the crosshairs of the pro-Kremlin disinformation machine, covered by outlets that are primarily local – for example Sputnik, Baltnews and Rubaltic. In addition to news pieces that typically consist of the defence forces’ press releases equipped with provocative headlines, there are also opinion pieces consisting of heavy criticism on the defence policy of the Baltic states.”
Putin’s United Russia party suffers heavy losses in Moscow poll
(DW)
“The opposition today dealt a heavy blow to President Putin’s ruling United Russia and its allies as the party lost a third of its seats in elections to the Moscow parliament. After a group of opposition activists was barred from yesterday’s ballot in the capital many urged their followers to vote tactically following an “intelligent voting” plan laid out by Alexei Navalny, the prominent Kremlin critic.”
‘Smart vote’ protests in Russia deal Putin’s party a blow in elections
(PRI)
“The results were part of a "smart vote" strategy orchestrated by the opposition. At the suggestion of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, many anti-Putin voters decided to vote for anyone other than a candidate from Putin's party, even candidates that voters might otherwise find distasteful.
"This was an experiment, and in those cities and regions where it was implemented for the first time, it worked very very well," Navalny said.”
Facts about Crimea’s annexation now taboo in Russia
(Euromaiden Press)
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