“No one wants to see our militant and hostile neighbor foment tensions in our home,” Prime Minister Kaja Kallas said, adding the move came following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “We will not afford Russia the opportunity to use the past to disturb the peace in Estonia.”
Outside Narva — Estonia’s third largest town with a large Russian speaking population — a replica of a T-34 tank with a red Soviet star sits atop a monument commemorating the Soviet soldiers who died freeing Estonia from Germany during World War II.
The entire memorial was being pulled down on Tuesday, and according to Interior Minister Lauri Laanemets, "the operation will be carried out in a dignified manner, for example, the flowers and the candles put at the monuments will be taken to a cemetery, not dumped in the trash." The dismantling was in progress, according to Estonian television ERR.
Russia “wanted to use the memorials commemorating the criminal occupation regime to fuel tensions in Estonian society,” Foreign Minister Urmas Reinsalu claimed in a government statement.
“Considering the current situation, ensuring public order is complicated for the authorities of the city of Narva,” Laanemets said in the same statement, and called it a “a great and complex issue.”
Since winning independence in 1991, the former Soviet republic of 1.3 million people has been entangled in disputes over the status of Russians, most of whom came to Estonia during the 50 years of Soviet rule.
In 2007, the relocation of the so-called Bronze Statue of Tallinn, another Soviet war memorial, from a city park led to days of rioting.