Pro-Kremlin media showed inexplicable interest in Estonia's census- security police

Photo: SCANPIX

Besides the usual accusations against Estonia concerning wrong interpretation of history and wrong laws, media channels loyal to the Russian leadership last year were inexplicably impatient to get the results of the Estonian population census, the annual review of the Estonian security police for 2012 says.

Well before the official results of the census were out the news portals regnum.ru and newspub.ru tried to get the upper hand by writing about the census outcome as supposedly indicating that the Estonian population is dying out. Since news stories on the subject published in March 2012 did not gain any ground in Estonia, the issue was brought up again and more thoroughly in the autumn.

Predictably, the TV channel Rossiya made a story on the census. The author was Yekaterina Zorina, well known in Estonia since her unique take on the events related to the relocation of the so-called Bronze Soldier monument in 2007, the security police said.

The security police described as somewhat surprising the arrival here on Sept. 20 last year at the invitation of the nonprofit organization Impressum of Vitali Leibin, chief editor of the Russki Reportyor magazine that has enjoyed a reputation as a free media outlet so far, followed by a visit by a likeable reporter and eventually an in-depth propaganda story on Estonia obviously polished by someone else in the course of several months. Using spokespeople acting more or less in good faith, it was namely this article that succeeded in gaining the desired resonance in Estonia by February this year, the security police said of the article that attracted a lot of attention in Estonia particularly in its citing Estonian Center Party MP Yana Toom as describing the Estonian language as a language that is dying out and Estonians as a dying-out people.

The television channel RT, previously known as Russia Today, is the main tool that the Russian Federation uses in its international influence operations. Description of RT's activities in Estonia in detail in last year's review of the security police attracted two new video stories, titled "RT Reporter -- Enemy of the State in Estonia?!" and "Baltic Blacklist: Professor Sacked for Speaking to RT" and published respectively in April and in June. Following these stories, RT has shown no interest in Estonia and has not sent any reporters here.

Since RT's rate of activity in other EU and NATO member states has not changed, this leads to the conclusion that RT will soon reactivate its interest in Estonia, the