How a War Monument Can Cause a Diplomatic Crisis

The Estonian-Russian diplomatic crisis has rapidly escalated in the last days. The government of Estonia – an independent EU country, formerly a Soviet republic – makes a decision to relocate a World War II monument - the Bronze Soldier – from the downtown to a place in the outskirts of the city of Tallinn. Common sense tells me that, whatever the reasons, this is a type of decision that a government of an independent country (even of a city government) should have enough authority to make without having to consider the possibility of infuriating the government of another country. However, when we talk of Russia, common sense is rarely a guiding principle. The current diplomatic crisis between Russia and Estonia shows how Russian high government officials make offensive, unjustified and destabilizing declarations addressing another country’s government and, by representation, its citizens.

Here is an Vladimir Socor’s article on the situation.

In another article he reveals the elements of the sophisticated Kremlin’s assault:

They include cyber attacks from within Russia’s Presidential Administration against the Estonian presidency’s and government’s electronic communications; political demands, backed by economic sanctions threats, to change the Estonian government; siege laid by Kremlin-created organizations to the Estonian Embassy in Moscow; and instigatory coverage of the April 27-29 violent riots of Russian youth in Tallinn by Russia’s state television.

Also, he warns that Moscow’s goal is not what it might appear:

...Moscow’s operational goal is not to elicit condemnation of Estonia or Latvia. It is, rather, to portray these Baltic states as irritants to the West’s relations with Russia and to induce Western governments to remain silent, instead of supporting the Baltic states against such bullying. Moscow hopes to draw wedges among Western allies through protracted application of this tactic.